The Master of Death
by rgm0005
Summary: In one world, an old man's life ends. In another, a foolish wizard performs a ritual and calls upon the Master of Death. And in both, there is a sound-a sound like an oncoming train. To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.
1. Catching a Train

**The Master of Death**

**Catching a Train**

Harry sat leisurely on a chair, hands neatly folded in his lap. He had no recollection of sitting down, nor of coming here at all. He had simply awoken to find himself here in this place.

"I can't say I ever expected to find myself here again," He mused. "Though I guess I should have."

Even though he had no memory of getting here, he wasn't alarmed. Though it was somewhat unexpected, he recognized the place.

Above him, a glass dome glittered in the light of…actually, now that he thought about it, it probably wasn't a sun. It glittered in the Light, then; just the Light. The floor was white, as was the rest of the long hall. It was neither warm nor cold and it was entirely full of a strange white mist.

He was in that strange King's Cross Station again. He wondered if he would meet Dumbledore here again. Somehow, he doubted it. If he wanted to meet his old teacher again, he would likely need board a train.

Closing his eyes, he smiled calmly.

That was okay, he thought. Dumbledore had said it, hadn't he? 'To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.'

He wasn't scared that he was dead, perhaps because he'd had a chance to see this all before. At most, he was slightly sad, because of the people he was going to leave behind, but he knew he'd see them again. Until then, Teddy, James, Albus, and Lily would be okay, he was sure. He was proud of the children he'd raised and of the men and woman he'd made them into. Ginny, Ron, and Hermione, he was sure he'd see again before too long.

"Until then," He murmured as he walked, trying to decide on a train. He didn't like any of the one's he saw, though he was sure they'd all take him to his destination. Each of them looked the same and, though he had no eye for train, he was sure each of them as a perfectly good train.

But if this was it, it had to be that one, didn't it?

Nodding to himself, he walked into Platform Nine and Three Quarters, and saw a polished version of the train that had always taken him where he most wanted to go. Boarding it quickly, he couldn't help but stick his head into the front cabin, wondering who might be in charge of trains in the afterlife.

He was somewhat disappointed to find that it was merely an amorphous cloud of multicolored lights, though he wasn't quite sure what he'd been expecting; an angel, perhaps. As he looked at it, it shifted shape slightly, and he got the feeling that it was looking at him in turn.

"I'm ready," He told it. "Shall we be off?"

A few moments later, the train began to start.

"It will be a few minutes, sir." It replied. Again, Harry felt a bit put out, as it sounded like a normal human voice, with a few hints of an English accent. There were no booming voices or choirs as he spoke, or even lightshows.

Nodding at the strange being and giving it a polite smile, Harry walked away, sighing slightly. All in all, dying wasn't as strange or exciting as he'd been expecting. Hopefully the _other_ side of this great adventure was more exciting.

Randomly choosing a cabin, he took a seat, before blinking as he saw what was on the seat opposite him.

"Oh?" He wondered. "How did you get here?"

Naturally, he received no response from the neatly organized bundle. On the bottom was his neatly folded cloak, while the beautifully crafted wand and perfect, unbroken stone. The Deathly Hallows, dying with their Master.

"Along for the ride then?" He wondered. "Well, if you wish to accompany me, I don't mind."

In a flicker reminiscent of switching on a light, the cloak was suddenly around his shoulders and the wand was in his hand. A weight in his pocket told him he had the stone, as well. He wondered about them, slightly. What did this mean? Was the wand still in Dumbledore's tomb? As far as he knew, he'd died of natural causes, so the Elder Wand would have lost its power as he'd intended, which could, he supposed, be considered 'dying,' but what of his Cloak and the Stone? Had they vanished from the world when he'd died?

Stroking his chin, he made a note to ask next time he saw Ginny. No one would notice if the Stone disappeared, but the Cloak should still be at their house.

"Sir?" A voice startled him from his thoughts. It was another of those colored cloud people, this one with a thicker accent.

"Yes?" He said, pulling down his cloak so the being could see him. If it had eyes, of course; he really couldn't tell.

"I'm terribly sorry, sir, but there have been a few issues." It said helplessly. "You are the Master of Death, aren't you sir?"

"I suppose I am," Harry nodded. "Is that a problem?"

"Of course not, sir," It assured him. "It's simply that we've been receiving a summon of sorts, requesting to see the Master of Death."

"Do we receive calls?" He wondered, blinking.

"It's fairly rare in the grand scheme of things, but it happens from time to time, sir." It replied, shape changing oddly in what Harry assumed was a shrug. "Should we answer, sir, or continue on our way?"

"Is it important?"

"I'm afraid I wouldn't know, but they're quite persistent."

"Are they causing trouble for you?" He wondered, furrowing his brow in concern.

"A little bit," It admitted. "We hadn't been able to reach you before now, however, so there wasn't much we could do."

"Well then, if it will make things easier for you, naturally I'd be glad to help."

The cloud made a wild shuddering motion that reminded him of a young man nodding eagerly, though he wasn't sure why.

"Thank you very much, sir. It may cause some delay in reaching your destination, however; I apologize for the inconvenience."

Harry shook his head calmly.

"Don't worry; it's no trouble at all. I have plenty of time now." He assured the strange being. "Shall we be off?"

"At once, sir."

**XxXXxX**

Harry watched in interest, gazing out the window as they speed towards his next great adventure. For a time—for he could not tell how much time had passed, if any, looking back—they had speed through the white mist, before apparently changing tracks. A short time later, they had exited the mist and entered a much stranger place.

There was a sun of some sort hanging in the sky above, but it wasn't any color Harry had ever seen, or had even known existed; it was like something had decided to insert itself into the visible light spectrum. Also, no matter how far they went or how long they traveled, it was always right above him.

Literally, directly above him.

And for that matter…he wasn't casting a shadow, either. He told the cloud person as much, and it looked embarrassed.

"I'm terribly sorry for the inconvenience, sir, but shadows aren't allowed in this area," It said, gesturing out the window. "It had to switch trains before we entered; it'll meet us on the other side, I'm sure."

Harry raised an eyebrow at that.

"In that case," He said, trying to puzzle out how that worked. "Why didn't we simply take that train as well?"

"Shadow's aren't allowed to carry bodies with them on that train, sir."

"Ah." Harry said, unsure how to respond to that and deciding to just take it in stride.

The landscape changed quite suddenly, as the sky became completely black and the ground became a stark white—and, indeed, his shadow returned as well. Before his eyes, both the ground and the sky began to fade away into swirls of colors of every kind, including several that probably were, even as the train began to go up and down and upside-down like they were on a rollercoaster.

After they stayed upside-down for extend period and didn't fall, Harry had to ask.

"Excuse me, but how far do we still need to go?"

The cloud person seemed to ponder that question for a moment.

"We have to go a little further until we reach the gates, sir. Then we'll need to pass out of our Shape, Location, Communication, Identity, and Existence."

Harry stared at it silently for a while.

"I'm pretty attached to my Identity. And Existence. And my Shape, my ability to Communicate, and while I'm not completely sure how Location, I have a feeling I want to keep that as well.

It seemed to wince.

"It won't be a problem, sir; you'll get most of it back on the other side, when we pass in through theirs in the opposite order, sir."

"_Most_ of it?" Harry asked, alarmed.

"Don't worry, sir—"

It cut itself off as the train suddenly sped up immensely, to the point where it felt like his face was peeling off.

Oh, wait; it was.

As was the rest of his body, actually, and the strange body of the cloud person. In moments, they were neither solid, liquid, nor gas, nor were they particularly defined in any way. Neither of them had any shape at all, and Harry took that to mean they had exited shape, but apparently not identity or location, because he was still himself and he was moving very quickly on something that might have been a train if it was anything in particular.

If he'd had a face, he would have frowned at the non-entity that was once a cloud person.

"I'm terribly sorry about that, sir; it always catches me by surprise. I would have warned you if I'd seen it coming." It apologized, so apparently they hadn't passed through Communication. "As I was saying, don't worry sir, it's just that our destination has much stricter rules regarding entering and exiting than most. To get in, we'll have to slip through the cracks, as it were. Existence, Identity, Communication and Location shouldn't be much of an issue, so it should be able to slip most of that through without any trouble, but they're very strict on letting matter from other Universes in—apparently, it's to keep things from outside from physically existing there."

"…Then…" Harry began.

"As I said, don't worry, sir. We'll get you in fine and anything you leave behind will be in perfect order upon your return." It assured him. "We pride ourselves on our service."

"I—"

He never finished that sentence, because they passed out of Location and Communication almost simultaneously. He could no longer tell if he was moving, nor could he see or feel anything—but perhaps he was everywhere, no longer bound by specific locations, though it availed him nothing, as he was, and it was just as possible that he didn't exist anywhere, he supposed. At the very least, he still had his Identity, and was aware of himself in a distant way, though probably not for long.

"I'll see you on the other side, me," He would have said, if it had still been possible for him communicate. He then would have added and "I hope."

But he wasn't, so it was in silence that Harry Potter faded from Existence.

**XxXXxX**

"We wait for your arrival, O chaser of the cursed! Cloak our enemies in your shadow, that they may not see the light! Come upon us, O Hidden Terror, and go among our enemies unseen! With your right hand, strike down the living! With your left, raise the dead! Share your path with us, Son of Destruction, you who know both life and death and hold them tightly in your hands! We pray to you, we plead with you, so let our need become your road and come to us swiftly!" The leader cried, carefully reciting the words.

The consequences of a mistake at this point would be…dramatic. Perhaps only fatal, if they were lucky. He couldn't afford to make any, but at the same time, he had confidence in his own abilities—and all he needed to do was make sure the summoning went properly and then leave.

That had been the agreement—and, more importantly, it had been his masters orders.

His assistants spoke back in their careful refrain. He listened to them carefully, to make sure they made no mistakes; their role was less important than his own, perhaps, but a mistake on their part could kill them all just as easily. Normally, he would have blanched at the mere thought of doing something this risky with even one other wizard, much less two, especially ones that weren't even fully trained.

But his masters had told him to and that had been the end of it.

"Behold our offering, Hunter of the Damned!" They said in thankfully perfect unison. He was gratefully for, if nothing else, the fact that they were at least experienced in working together. "Flesh and Blood we've brought for you! One who lives and who died, brought here for your glory! Come to us and grace us with your presence! Come to us on your death-shadowed wings!"

At each of their feet was a man. One had been killed at the beginning of the ritual, while one would be sacrificed at the end. Both of their bodies were anointed with artfully inflicted wounds, praising the glory of the one they would bring into this world.

The still living man no longer had even the strength to struggle, and simply wept.

"Come to us, across the depths of the Abyss! Leave behind your kingdom and hasten across the shores of Eternity! Bring your servants who are neither living nor dead and rejoice with them in our world! For you, we open the gates!" The Leader continued, his voice rising.

This was it.

They were approaching the crescendo.

Soon, there would be no turning back.

Of course, for him, there never had been.

"Behold our offering, Hunter of the Damned!" His assistants continued. "Flesh and Blood we've brought for you! One who lives and who died, brought here for your glory! Come to us and grace us with your presence! Come to us on your death-shadowed wings!" His assistants repeated on last time, one lifting a blade to the fallen mans throat.

"On this empty night, we call upon thee! We call upon the Darkest Lord, that we may be blessed by the sight of your glory! Please, give us this mercy and let us see the face of the Master of Death!"

It was quite, as if coming from a great distance, but there was a sound much like a gate swinging open.

They held their breath.

**XxXXxX**

He came back to existence with a crash.

In the first moment, he knew himself. In that beautiful moment, he knew with a surety that went beyond communication or even self-realization that he was himself. And perhaps he knew nothing more than that, but coming into existence after what may have been seconds or may have been trillions of years, that simple realization was the most beautiful thing in the world.

He could not communicate with anything, or even himself, and so could not form ideas and conclusions. As such, perhaps a million years passed as he basked in the simple truth of existence, as a mindless concept without mind or shape in a place that was nowhere, but it could just as easily have been no time at all.

It didn't matter. Eventually, he reentered Communication. Immediately, a thousand notions that had been meaningless without the ability to be put together with other ideas found themselves doing so. He was Harry Potter, a dead man, a wizard, a husband, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and with the way his oldest great-granddaughter had been going on about that boy, he probably would have been a great-great-grandfather before the decade had ended, if he'd survived.

Quickly putting together and organizing a million scattered words, thoughts, and ideas, he—who was definitely Harry Potter—slowly put back together the scattered puzzle that was himself. He wasn't sure if that had been a long process or a slow one, because even though he was now able to identify and communicate, he still wasn't able to tell time.

For all he knew, he was outside it. Maybe it relied on Location, which he was pretty sure he still didn't have.

"Are you okay?" He asked, unable to see the still formless former cloud person.

"Yes, sir," It replied, in the way things without voices or voice boxes replied. "Don't worry about me, sir. How are you, sir?"

"I'm okay, all things considered." Harry replied. "I still kind of miss having a Shape and Location, though."

"Don't worry, sir; after we reenter Location, we'll get time back as well, and then it'll be just a short time until we reach Shape."

Harry would have nodded if shapeless things could do stuff like that.

"And how long will it take to reach Location?"

"No time at all, sir," It replied dutifully. "And then we'll be somewhere."

"Ah," Harry realized. "Yes, I suppose not. Would you happen to know how long we were…gone, then?"

"As I am still currently outside it, I'm afraid I'm still having a bit of difficult comprehending time, sir, much less it's passing. However, based off what I know of the destination, I would say we were gone for minus a hundred something years, sir?"

Harry would have looked surprised if he still had a face.

"If you don't mind me asking, how did we do that?"

"It's no trouble, sir; it's really nothing impressive. If two worlds are parallel, then naturally, it's simply a matter of moving diagonally. After you exit time, it's really quite simple."

"Ah, I see," Harry said, nodding. "So basically, we exited time, drove backwards for a bit, crossed the street, and then reentered?"

"Something like that, sir. You're taking this quite well, sir."

Harry would have shrugged had he been able.

"Stuff like this just happens to me sometimes," He said, before pausing. "Well, not stuff like _this_, but…in all my years as a wizard, life never once stopped being amazing. I find it reassuring that death is the same way."

Suddenly, they were moving. Time was flowing, too, which Harry confirmed by counting the seconds. He went straight from one to ten without skipping about randomly.

"There we go, sir. Not much further now."

Harry hummed in response.

"You said there would be some problems concerning regaining our shapes, didn't you?"

"Ah, yes. Just some minor problems, sir; I apologize in advanced for any inconvenience it might cause. We had to leave our forms when we exited Shape, so we'll need to pick up new ones on this side. You needed a new body, anyway, sir."

Harry pondered that.

Finding himself in a new body was sure to be strange, but it wasn't the first time he'd done that sort of thing; he'd had more than his fair share of strange accidents with transfiguration, from students and trainees and scientists who weren't paying to enemies out for his blood. He'd manage, as long as his mind and magic made it through intact; he'd just transfigure himself back to normal.

However…

"Pick up new ones?" He said. "We aren't body snatching, are we?"

He'd had to deal with cases of possession, too, but he was usually the one putting a stop to it or the one that someone was trying to possess. He had no desire to be the one doing it and locking up some poor lad in his own head.

In fact, he'd be fairly…upset if that were to happen.

Apparently, his formless companion recognized that.

"Of course not, sir," It said, before pausing. "Well, I don't know who is summoning you or why, so I suppose it's possible. But we aren't doing that, sir. We simply picked up some bodies while we were outside existence and are bringing them in with us."

"Outside existence?" Harry asked, blinking. "Wouldn't there be nothing there, then?"

"Of course not, sir; it just means nothing out there exists. I think you'll find that there are a great number of things that don't exist, sir; indeed, we didn't exist a short time ago."

Harry pondered that for a moment, slowly putting together the scattered pieces of what he knew.

"So there exist things even outside Existence, but they have no Identity, Location, Shape, or ability to Communicate?"

"Sometimes, but not always, sir. Have you ever seen a Venn Diagram, sir? With two or more overlapping circles? The concepts you're thinking of are the circle and normal reality is the area where all those circles overlap. Sometimes, the circles are concentric, but sometimes they aren't; so perhaps in someplace you could be outside Existence but have Identity, Shape, Location, and Communication. And of course, the 'circles' are by no means required to be the same size—or even be circles. It really depends on the place, sir. What we've picked up came from outside anything, however, so you don't need to worry about subverting another Identity."

Harry scratched his chin, interested.

"Do all Universes have those five 'circles' then?"

"Most places considered livable have at least those five, yes. Some places have more and some have less, but those places, as you can imagine, can be quite odd."

"Have you been to lots of interesting places, then?"

"Oh, yes, sir. Many, many amazing places."

"Perhaps when this is over, you can tell me about some of them, if you don't mind talking to an old man for awhile."

"It would be my pleasure, sir. Perhaps you'll even get to see some of them."

Harry was about to ask what that meant when the train suddenly slammed on the brakes and began moving much slower. If he'd been in his normal body, he probably would have pitched forward into the seat in front of him.

Harry looked forward expectantly and was met with the sight he'd expected. Through the formless 'seats' in front of him, he could see all the way to the front of the train—and it was a train now. As if paint were being dumped on something invisible, colors and shapes and matter appeared in row after row of the train and left it looking very different then it had before. He caught a glimpse of dark fire and smoke and walls of black stone, before the wall and seats in front of him resumed shape.

And then he ran into a wall of water.

Or, at least, that's what it felt like. A wall of liquid force, slamming into his face and then swallowing him whole. It crept across the front of him and the back of him and inside and out, until it had touched every part of him, giving substance and shape to every atom and molecule until he fully existed and was real.

There was a sudden weight to it; having form when moments before he hadn't. And some pain as well, as expected of being born into the world. But with it came a delightful realization of being real in every sense of the word that sent his hearts pounding.

…Wait.

Harry looked down at himself. He looked down at his fingers and hands and arms. At his body and legs and feet and clothes and how they had been warped and changed.

And then he opened his mouth, the mouth inside his mouth, and the mouth inside that and asked a question.

"I have to admit, I didn't see this coming. Could you explain this, please?"

**XxXXxX**

For a long moment, all was silent. In the wake of that sound of a swinging gate, nothing happened, forcing the three of them to wait in tense silence.

At least, it was tense for the leader. The other two hadn't had much of a mind of their own in a long, long time.

"Did it fail?" He wondered. If this had been any other summon, he would have been angry, embarrassed, or upset at his failure, but in this case, he was simply relieved. If he had tried and done everything right, but the summon simply hadn't worked, then he could simply report back to his Masters that the ritual had been a fake or had otherwise become useless.

In a way, this was the ideal result, because it meant he didn't have to worry about what would happen if the summon _worked_.

He was about to give a sigh of release when he noticed his assistants had turned their faces slightly, as if noticing something. Since he'd left them that ability specifically to notice threats and react to them, he immediately tensed and scanned the area careful. It was possible, if unlikely, that he'd done something wrong and the Gatekeeper had caught wind of his actions, even if his Masters had assured him he wouldn't arrive until it was far too late.

But there was nothing like that. Granted, he wasn't quite arrogant enough to think he would be able to spot the Gatekeeper if he was actually trying to hide, but as the seconds ticked by and he didn't die, he became sure that wasn't the problem.

He was about to risk giving away where he was to ask what his assistants had noticed when he heard it. Or rather, when he started paying attention to it. It wasn't an amazing, unearthly sound or anything like that, which was probably why he hadn't noticed it immediately. In fact, for someone like him, who had lived through the industrial revolution, it was a commonly heard sound that he could recognize anywhere.

It was the sound of a train. There was no mistaking it; he'd seen dozens, if not hundreds, of trains, heard even more, and had even ridden on a few himself. In fact, he would even go so far as to make an informed guess and say that it was steam engine, despite not having heard one in more than fifty years. That had probably been why his assistants had noticed it instantly, even from such a distance; they had probably never heard the sound of a steam locomotive in their lives.

However, despite how easy it was to recognize the sound, it didn't cause it to make any sense. There weren't any train tracks nearby—and if there had been, they certainly wouldn't have run on steam.

So unless someone had managed to construct an outdated train, put down tracks, and then set everything up to make both operational without him noticing—_in an area that he constantly monitored_—and it had decided to run for the first time right when he was performing his ritual, then there was only one real possibility.

And it was a fairly bad one.

Though it did explain why the sound was coming closer.

"Get down!" He ordered, quickly ducking under his work desk. Without hesitation, his students moved to comply.

There was a long moment filled with nothing but the sound of an oncoming train.

And then that moment was shattered with a thunderous, deafening crash as said train crashed into, through, and back out of his house.

Powder and rubble rained down from the ceiling and he thanked God that he was in the basement. But even being in the basement shouldn't have saved him; the floor should have broken like paper under a train's weight.

The fact that it didn't pretty much confirmed his suspicions.

Waiting a moment to make sure nothing happened, he carefully moved out from under his desk, glancing up at the ceiling. He couldn't see the train, of course—but he _could_ see the black stains sinking through from the floor above, veins of darkness spreading and intertwining until they formed something recognizable as train tracks.

He took a deep breath, slowly exhaled, and spoke.

"_Shit_."

He honestly considered bailing out then and there, his Masters be damned. It would be easy enough to open a gate to the Nevernever…

No. If he ran now, he'd be hunted down before the sun rose. His only hope now was to somehow survive the night.

"Follow me," He said simply, with the firm awareness that he would be obeyed. His servants fell in behind him, coming out from cover without hesitation, and they made towards the stairs.

Though they had been fine in the basement, it was likely their…associates upstairs hadn't found this experience enjoyable.

Which was a shame. Truly.

He didn't even get a chance to open the door to the next floor, however, because one of them tore it off its hinges before he could.

"DuMorne!" She hissed, her flesh mask torn away, along with bits of flesh beneath it. Since she was still alive, he deduced that she hadn't actually gotten hit by the train. A quick glance around confirmed that about half of their vampiric guests had miraculously survived. "What is the meaning of this!"

He honestly had neither the patience nor the time to deal with them right now, however, so he brush passed her without answering the question, already feeling the beginnings of a headache.

It wasn't hard to spot the train—it went straight through the house. It wasn't hard to figure out that it was abnormal, either, what with the oddly colored fire, fell lights, strange smoke, and black walls.

However, it still didn't make sense; why a train? Even if he knew why it was here and who was on it, why would they come by _train_?

And why, for God's sake, did they have to drive it _through his house_!

"What the hell did you do, DuMorne!" The vampire insisted.

He snapped a quick, furious glare in her direction.

"Silence, you fool! This isn't the time!" He snarled, shifting his gaze back to the train. As if it were a normal train, there were windows along the side, allowing passengers to lookout—or in this case, allowing onlookers to peer in.

If the creature they'd summoned really had arrived, then logically, he was on the train.

Walking slowly, He shifted his gaze from window to window. After glancing over one of the windows, he paused, frowning, thinking he'd seen something.

He glanced back into it, staring for a long moment, not seeing anything but sure to the core that there was something there. It was like he was looking at a picture, missing something important, and knew it. But he couldn't wrap his mind around it.

No matter how hard he tried to see it, there was nothing there.

And then nothing in the cabin shifted and looked back at him, staring out the window at him curiously.

All the pieces that he hadn't been able to see fell into place in that moment and he saw what he'd been missing—what his mind had refused to see.

Stumbling back, he saw it—oh, God, he _saw it_—and, as it looked out that window, he knew it had seen him as well.

For a moment that stretched on without end, he tried to look away—to look at something else; anything else—but he couldn't. He couldn't shut his eyes or move in the face of what he saw through the tainted glass windows of that long, black train.

And then, like a Godsend, a sudden hiss of released air drew his attention, breaking the spell that had held him in place.

For a moment, he felt nothing but relief at the sheer fact that he'd been able to look away; that he hadn't been stuck for eternity staring at that image, like he had feared for a second he would.

But then, the relief fell away, along with the bottom of his stomach, as he turned and realized the reason behind the sound.

But the doors of the train had already begun to open.

**XxXXxX**

"Oh, dear!" Harry cried, alarmed, looking wide-eyed out the window. "We drove the train right through someone's house!"

The former-but-definitely-no-longer-cloud person slid forward to peer over his shoulder. Its mandibles twitched once as it closed its eyes. At a glance, Harry would say that it had seven sapphire eyes and just as many legs, but then, he would look again, and it would be obvious that it had twenty-three limbs, and a lone, pale eye that was surrounded in flame but did not burn. As he crept near, a thing Harry could no call a flower drew near his face; he quickly brushed it away and drew back his hand before it could bit him.

It sighed.

"I apologize, sir;" He said. "I'm afraid my brother's not a very good driver."

"Hold the explanation until later, then," Harry commanded, rising. "I'll go check on things."

He gestured with his wand, ignoring the way the roots began intertwining with his fingers as it seemed to attempt to grow into some horrific tree. They nibbled on his fingers in a way he hoped was affectionate, but he could barely feel their teeth through the armored growth that had once been his clothes. He thought that if it could be called anything, it was a type of impossible fungus, but its teeth were aimed outwards and it didn't seem to be trying to eat him at the moment, so it probably wasn't important.

A brief cloud of sparks filled the air and he nodded to himself; that spell did exactly what he'd intended it too. He performed a few other minor spells to make sure casting one on himself wouldn't make him spontaneously combust or something. When he felt satisfied that seemed unlikely, he tapped his wand to his forehead.

A cold, wet sensation flowed over him, like someone had dumped a tub of ice water on him. He felt his body began to shift and twist into his normal form—

And then it flowed off and he changed back.

"Hm…" Harry pondered. "This complicates things, somewhat."

As he cast a few more transfiguration spells with equal results, his Invisibility Cloak crawled back up the length of his body on equally invisible legs, settling around his shoulders comfortably after shuddering once in satisfaction. It tugged on the teeth of his clothes, apparently trying to decide if they were eatable, which caused them to hiss at it. Somewhat worried, he reached into his pocket with one of his left hands, and drew out the Resurrection Stone which had gained a few new dimensions and sides.

He looked at himself, more exasperated then anything.

"Am I terribly alarming, do you think?" He asked his companion.

A man appeared outside the window, looking in quietly, as if confused. Harry glanced back out, curious himself, and for a minute, there was no reaction.

And then, the man stumbled back, his face a mask of horrified alarm.

"Well, I suppose that answers that question," He sighed. "Okay, let's try this one more time."

He tapped his forehead again with the same cold sensation. His body began to change, his bifurcated arms sliding back together before his many crystalline eyes and his hearts slowly merging into one. His monstrous form trembled, twisted inhuman knots of muscle warping beneath with his metallic hide, even as it became more and more human as its geometries straightened. The hardened blades and barbs of his black hair, darker than it had ever been in life, softened down, turning to the aged white of an old, old man. The rows of shifting, twisting thorns stopped their chainsaw like spinning and receded, merging into strong white teeth. Eyes closed and moved back towards his face, his new appendages fell away, strange organs slid back inside his body and merged with or became old ones, and the creatures skittering along inside and outside his body turned back into the normal systems. Parts of him liquefied and others hardened, even as his skeleton merged together and broke apart, slowly becoming something human. When halfway through his transformation, he felt his body try to resist and fight off the spell, he forced it down with his will alone, forcing it to continue.

He sighed, then, back in the shape he'd taken when he first begun this trip. He opened his eyes, which had only one color, one iris, and one pupil. He opened a mouth with a single row of stationary teeth and inhaled deeply, filling human lungs. He'd like to say he was completely back to normal, but he could still feel his body trying to resist the enchantment he'd put it under.

"Why am I having so much trouble transfiguring myself?" He asked, mostly speaking to himself.

"These forms don't like to be changed, sir. They are things that never had a chance to exist, and now that they do, they wish to continue doing so."

Harry blinked at that.

"Are they conscious?" He wondered, furrowing his brow.

"Not in the way you're thinking." Was his answer. "But they have a desire to be that I'm sure nobody who actually does could possibly understand. By the way, sir; if you wish to appear as you did before, you may wish to do something about your shadow."

Harry glanced down at it. It was now a trailing monster onto itself, reflecting a hideous form that looked nothing like what he'd been.

He tutted, casting a spell at it, which, naturally, just impacted with the floor because shadows are merely the absence of light. He pondered it for a moment, before shaking his head.

"It doesn't matter," He said. "People could be hurt out there. Hopefully, no one will notice."

**XxXXxX**

"Were you the ones who summoned the Master of Death?" The monstrosity that crawled out of the train—and who had apparently been driving it—questioned.

A part of Justin wanted to demand where he'd learnt how to drive, but the majority of him was suppressing its disgust and trying to simultaneously avert it's gaze and yet not come off as insulting.

"I was," He admitted, seeing no reason to deny it at this point. The only option left was to try to somehow salvage this situation.

Which was going to be very hard, because he'd intended to summon the being into a well made and fortified circle, and not upstairs, in a train, where nothing was there to keep it from killing him.

And the others, he guessed.

"Well, I'm here," Another voice said. The Monster moved aside at once, crawling alongside the walls of the train on its many amorphous legs. After he was no longer blocking the exit the speaker came into sight.

Justin was surprised, despite himself.

He hadn't assumed there would be an Outsider so skilled at taking human form.

It was, or appeared to be, an old man. His hair had long since turned white with age, but his eyes were as bright as any Justin had ever seen. There were both laugh and worry lines deep in his face. Perched upon his nose was a pair of glasses, through which grandfatherly eyes seemed to twinkle at him. His robes were a simple, comfortable black about which nothing in particular stood out.

Looking at him, Justin couldn't help but think of him as if he were a fellow wizard and despite his knowledge of his true nature, began to…not so much relax, but feel as if he were still somewhat in his depth. As he had a thousand times whenever he met a fellow magic user, he quickly glanced the man over with trained eyes.

The wand in his hand immediately drew his attention, but he just as quickly looked over it. Wands, rods, and staves were standard parts of the arsenal of wizards and, while perhaps the most dangerous, they weren't the most important things to look for. It was simply something you had to accept was there and, if needed, deal with.

But it was the more insidious and subtle weapons that one needed to spot.

He checked the man's fingers for rings, almost unconsciously, found a gold band that could have been a wedding band but filled it away, just in case; it wouldn't be the first time someone had hidden a deadly weapon in that disguise. He then checked his wrists, neck, and, though enchanted earrings were rare on men, his ears, none of which carried anything. With the most common items out, he checked him over for out of place metallic items, noted several pockets that could easily had contained small items, but found nothing obvious.

And then he realized what he was doing.

Mentally kicking himself, he glancing quickly back at the—he had to remember it _wasn't_ a man or a wizard—things face, and was thrown further off-guard at its slightly amused smile. It'd noticed what he'd been doing and, more then that, it had glanced him over as well.

Worst of all, it had finished before him and then waited for him to catch up.

He felt like he was looking at a Senior Wizard.

"I apologize," It said, quite polite and amiable as it stepped down from the train. "It was not my intention to crash into your house."

Here he shot a look toward the creature clinging to the side of the train, on eyebrow arched. The things main eye split open vertically, revealing a mouth, which murmured an apology.

It glanced back at him.

"I assure you, I will take responsibility for fixing whatever damage might have been caused. It shouldn't take very long to fix your house, but were you or your associates hurt in the crash?" When it mentioned his associates, it had glanced once over the ugly, bat-like form of the vampire's, and had then looked back to him, apparently not finding it odd, curious, or even important.

Justin half-expected one of the vampire's to say something that could get them all killed, but they'd been silent since the first creature had stepped off the train. He glanced towards the leader, saw her looking at something by the 'man's' feet, and followed her gaze.

Then he snapped his own back up to its face. He worked his jaw for a minute before managing to say something.

"Thank you for the kind offer," He said, hoping he wasn't falling into some kind of trap. "Thankfully, none of our injuries are important. I am—"

He had a sudden flash of uncertainty that made him double think giving both his first and last name.

"Justin," He finished, not missing a beat. "And this is my companion…"

He honestly didn't remember what the vampire leader's name was. He was sure he'd been told it at some point, but it had been useless to him, magically, so he'd forgotten it in an instant.

"Amara," She said, quietly.

"Amara," The Outsider repeated, smiling kindly. "Meaning Eternal, if I recall. A fitting name, my dear, for I imagine your beauty will never fade."

The Vampire twitched uncomfortably at the praise, her slimy, batlike form shuddering, but the Outsider's attention had already shifted, focusing quite suddenly on the pair standing behind him.

"And who might these two be?" It wondered.

Justin tensed, nervously. It couldn't know what they were…could it? Or had it just been chance that had shifted its gaze to them?

"They're no one important," He assured, keeping his tone neutral.

"Truly?" It interrupted, suddenly standing beside him, apparently without have had to cross the intervening space. "Remarkable. Do you mind if I take a look?"

Even as it asked, it was already stepping passed them, its full attention focused on the two of them.

Swallowing, Justin turned to look at its back, before starting as he found that he couldn't see anything but it's head.

"I-is something wrong?"

It glanced at him over what Justin was fairly sure was its shoulder.

"Ah, no," It said. "I'm simply curious. You see, over my long life, I have seen many strange and wondrous things. However…" It glanced back at the pair. "I must admit, I've never met _anyone_ who wasn't important."

Looking back at him, the being caught his eyes, slid neatly past his defenses, and simply began to ruffle through his mind. Images and thoughts swam across his vision, too fast for him to make out anything definite.

A second after he felt the invasion, Justin quickly turned away, breaking the connection.

"My, my," The creature said, his voice very quiet and no longer particularly grandfatherly at all.

**XxXXxX**


	2. First Stop

**The Master of Death**

**First Stop**

**XxXXxX**

Harry straightened, ignoring both Justin and the Vampires.

Now, the only things he was interested in were these two children.

He looked at the girl first, quickly touching her mind with his own. As gently as he could without slowing down, he entered it and quietly took account of what was inside and its general state of affairs, skillfully navigating the many layers of her mind. It wasn't the first time he had used Legilimency to deduce a person's mental state, or to learn the truth of a situation.

As the Head of the Aurors, Legilimency had been one of his most subtle and useful skills. After all, which was scarier: a wizard that can kick down your door and shoot you with a spell or a wizard that can look at you and know every time you lie? Among the Aurors, there were some of both; or there had been when he was done, at least.

And there was a very important reason why he'd spent over a hundred years in charge of every last one of them.

He withdrew from her mind silently, greatly displeased with what he'd found, and was about to move on to the boy when he was interrupted.

"What are you doing?" Justin demanded, in a tone of voice that said he wasn't quite ready to initiate violence, but he was prepared to.

Harry drew away from the boy's mind before he could enter and turned to him.

"The real question," he said. "Is what I'm _going_ to do, to which the answer is 'leave and take both these children with me.'"

It was quiet, certain statement of fact; no more, no less.

Justin tensed under his calm gaze. With his attention focused on the man, Harry could feel the thoughts skittering upon the surface of his mind, even through his defenses. He could probably penetrate deeper, if he tried, but did not feel any particular need to do so.

The surface thoughts of a nervous man often revealed enough by themselves.

He knew that Justin believed he would die if he let him do that. If he let one escape, he'd be severely punished, but both would mean the death of him. He knew it was his Masters that he feared and that he feared them more than anyone else.

"And if I refuse to let you?" Justin said, lifting his staff. Around him, the vampire's, which was what Justin's thoughts revealed them to be, tensed, apparently deciding that he was an enemy.

Harry closed his eyes and sighed quietly.

"I do not consider myself someone who needs to make pointless threats," He said patiently. "So I shall not do so. I will, however, say that I shall do everything in my power to see these children away from here, safe, and far beyond your reach. And as I am someone who believes in the importance and sanctity of life and derives no pleasure by hurting others, I will also request, for my sake as much as yours, that you do not press me on this matter."

When he opened his eyes, they were as hard as any stone.

"But if you do, I will see these children safe regardless." He continued, completely serious. "I view myself, first and foremost, as a man who at least has his priorities straight—and there are few things I can imagine being more important than the safety of an injured child, which is why, if you are wise and step aside, I will leave this place without issue, so as to see them well that much sooner. I urge you to take this chance, for it is truly a rare thing, for me to let someone like you go so easily. Let us leave quietly, flee this place before I return, and for the sake of these children, I will swallow my desire to see you brought to justice, at least for a time."

"I'm afraid that is impossible," Justin said.

'_There are a number of people that I fear far more than you,'_ Went unsaid, but Harry heard it in the man's thoughts regardless.

Skimming Justin's thoughts as he was, Harry already knew that, but it didn't stop him from trying.

"Then surrender, Justin," He urged. "I give you my word that if you do, I will see you safe until you can be judged fairly."

Justin smiled bitterly and Harry received an image of the fate that awaited him if he were caught.

"Despite the kindness of your offer, I'm afraid I'll have to decline."

"Surrender to me then," Harry tried one last time. "Turn your back on the darkness and I shall give you a chance to repent. You were a good man, once, Justin DuMorne; I will believe you could be a good man again, even if no one else does, and protect you and guide you on your way back to being one."

For a long, lingering moment, Harry hoped he might say yes.

And then, without replying, Justin lifted his staff, ready.

Sadly, Harry looked around.

"And you, Amara? I have no grudge with you yet, nor with any vampire. Leave this place and I will not pursue you."

"As distasteful as I find it," Amara said in a perfectly human voice. "An alliance is an alliance. It's simply not worth risking it by abandoning the wizard here."

"And the rest of you?" He asked, looking at the rest of the crowd. "I respect your loyalty, but I urge you to reconsider where it's placed. You do not know me, but please, believe me when I say it's not worth it to stay here; leave, if only to ease the burden upon your families."

He received a few scattered hisses, but otherwise no response. Amara glanced at the few that seemed to consider it and that was that.

Harry took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. He looked at Justin, then Amara, and then each and every one of them, quiet and sad, seeming very much like a tired old man.

Part of being a Legilimens was knowing, no matter how bad your opponent was, exactly how and why they got to that point. Another part, one of the hardest, in fact, was knowing that they weren't always that way.

It didn't change anything. Their choices had still been their own, as had their crimes and mistakes.

Even so, he could not hate someone, for making mistakes. He'd made his own and would keep making mistakes as long as he continued to exist. And though he had, for a very long time, hated the criminals he'd fought, he wasn't the type of man who could keep that hatred burning forever.

He'd seen good children make bad choices, or be forced into things, or feel as if they had no choice. He'd even watched a select, saddening few walk down the wrong path knowingly and willingly. And once, he may have hated them for those choices, back when he was a little younger and a little more ignorant, but eventually, they'd just come to make him very, very sad.

That didn't change anything, either.

He still had a job to do, regardless of whether he was an Auror or not, or even whether he was alive or died.

He stood firmly in front of the children and nodded once.

"Come at me, then," He said, burying sadness under resolve. "I do have some experience with being a teacher; I shall teach you what fools you were, for not taking the chances that I gave you."

He had barely finished his sentence when he was attacked from three directions.

But, skimming Justin's mind as he was, he was also already in motion. He didn't even bother looking behind, relying completely on Justin's thoughts.

A gesture with his wand shifted the boy's—also named Harry, according to Justin's thoughts—staff roughly to the side, a much simpler matter than trying to counter or block it. The sudden blast of fire the boy unleashed hit the first of the onrushing vampires, even as Harry stepped back to avoid the next spell. 'Elaine's' spell, which Justin had known would be one of the lightning spells she favored, was something that moved too fast for anyone to dodge—unless they had reacted seconds before it had even been aimed.

As it was, he looped his left arm with her right and shifted it so that the wand in her hand was aimed at another vampire when the words of the spell left her lips. Releasing her arm, he brought his arm up to settle it gently around her shoulders, hand spread wide.

Recovering, the younger Harry brought his staff back around to aim at his face, apparently unconcerned for his proximity to the girl he'd once loved. Harry had already lifted his wand to counter and a simple Disarming Charm tore the staff from the boy's hands and sent it neatly into his left.

Without having even paused to see if his spell worked, his right hand had continued to rise, before settling around the young man's shoulders. He removed three fingers from his wand as he flicked it towards Elaine, tearing hers away and then clutching it in his free fingers.

Pulling them both towards him, he Apparated a fraction of a second before Justin's tightly controlled near-line of fire would have pierced through his heart, shifting the three of them to the opposite side of the train.

As he released them, both of the children fell to their knees and began to vomit. Harry wanted to help them, but as long as they were under Justin's control, they were enemies, if unwilling ones. Besides, as long as they were preoccupied here, they were out of danger.

Gesturing at them with a suppressed wince, he roughly cleared their throats with a spell so they wouldn't choke and then Stunned them both. Tapping them each once, he made them fade quietly into invisibility beneath his Disillusionment charms. He considered Conjuring guards, but decided that would be more likely to give them away. In this case, keeping them from being noticed at all was probably a better choice than letting things get to the point that people were fighting to the death over their unconscious bodies.

It was either this or Apparating—and he just didn't have anywhere to Apparate too, in this new world. Hopefully, everyone would just think they were gone when they couldn't find them.

Still holding the stolen staff and wand, he Apparated again, this time outside the house, until he was behind Justin and the Vampires. In a second, he prioritized his opponents, located a safe place to move to, and Apparated again, reappearing all but back to back with Justin.

He immediately dropped both Elaine's wand and Harry's staff and transfigured them both before they even hit the ground. The hard wood of the staff expanded and stretched, growing into an enormous snake—a Green Anaconda, the largest non-magical snake in the world. The wand filled out and then sprouted eight legs, growing into a Goliath Bird-Eating Tarantula, which was the same for normal spiders. A pair of Engorgement Charms led to them both swelling in size, until the snake was making the already limited space in the house seem really small and the tarantula was the size of a large dog. He sent a silent Oppugno at them, urging them to attack.

Neither was a particularly lethal member of their species, as these things go, but they weren't meant to be. They were simply there to distract Justin for awhile.

It had been Ron's idea, originally. They'd been in a bit of a tight spot and had needed a distraction to defeat a group of Dark Wizards that they'd gone in to fight under the misinformation that there were three of them, when there had actually been seventeen. He'd told Ron to distract them while he attacked from behind in the hopes of reducing their numbers a bit, to which Ron had conjured about three dozen of the spiders, engorged them, and sent them over to harass them.

Even if they weren't especially lethal, a hairy spider the size of a dog will get your attention, especially if it brought its friends. The wizards had focused on them completely and between the two of them they'd downed them all before they could react.

The horde of large, distracting animals had been a standard part of the Auror arsenal ever since.

True to form, Justin let out startled, somewhat strangled noise when he suddenly found himself half buried under a giant snake with a huge spider eagerly crawling towards him.

Deciding he'd be free of the man for a time, Harry focused completely on the now rather nervous vampires. He did a quick head count, though he could tell just by looking that there were enough of them that if they managed to get over their surprise and fear and fight competently, things would get troublesome.

Best to keep that from happening then.

Fortunately, he was more then used to being outnumbered.

One of the vampires made a sudden movement, either to move forward or fall back, and the tip of his wand glowed as he picked his first target.

Whatever the vampire had been trying to do, it didn't matter—a simple Trip Jinx caught him by the ankles and tore the feet out from under him. The reaction was instantaneous and exactly as he'd hoped, as the entire group scattered in every direction without even checking to see if the fallen vampire was harmed. Their own minds supplied a dozen images of what he could have done and those thoughts and fears completely swallowed the truth of the situation.

It hadn't harmed anyone and the spell was an extremely simple one, but any semblance of order had instantly been erased.

Which, Harry had known, would both make things easier and make them more difficult.

As the vampire's scattered in every direction and failed to use their numbers properly, he was at both an advantage and a disadvantage. Fighting with an unorganized group was easier then fighting with an organized one, of course, but it was also more complicated. In their sudden fear, the vampires all scattered randomly, trying to escape or, at least, get out of sight. They tried to head upstairs or down or even leave the house entirely. It was easier then dealing with a bunch of organized killers with super strength and speed, though, which was why he'd done it.

Pursing his lips, he quickly prioritized, drew his cloak around himself as he cast a quick Silencing Charm, and apparated.

Appearing instantly in front of the vampires that had tried to escape to the other side of the train, he raised his wand, veiled from its sight.

Over the years, a number of his students and associates had commented on his 'style;' particularly, the way that seemed so underwhelming for a wizard of his renown. At such comments, Harry could do nothing but shrug. It was true that he didn't make much use of the more violent curses that many favored, even though he knew more than his fair share of them, but that was simply because he'd rarely seen any need for them. He'd been given permission a number of times to use restricted and sometimes even illegal spells in the course of his job, but had rarely seen a use for them, either.

The spells he usually made use of had seen him through more than a century of dark wizards and dueling competitions.

Besides, most of the questions fell silent after they saw him duel.

The vampire let out a startled squawk as its legs suddenly snapped together, resisting his control. Off-balance, it tumbled over and fell on its face, even as a sudden force grabbed it by the ankles and began to drag it back into the open.

Harry vanished and reappeared behind a vampire attempting to run upstairs. With a sharp gesture, the vampire was suddenly hoisted upside down by its ankles and just as quickly dropped on its head, sending the creature tumbling down the stairs.

Another fell over in mid run as it tried to smash its way through the door, finding its knees suddenly reverse, now bending frontwards instead of its usual backwards. As it tried to recover, a number of snakelike ropes appeared out of nowhere, binding him tightly.

Harry gestured upwards and a vampire fell from the ceiling, where it had been trying to escape to the upper floor through the gouges the trains arrival had caused. His limbs snapped together as he was caught in the Full-Body Bind and he found himself on the ground, unable to move.

Several vampires became violent instead of trying to run, suddenly attacking the train conductor, who was scurrying towards the doors of the train. Harry appeared in front of his companion, invisible but protective, and they found themselves vomiting slugs or with sardines squirming out of their noses, with knees suddenly bending the wrong direction or fingers mysteriously gone, or with their fangs suddenly grown past their chins and then tied into knots.

None of them were truly harmful; they were simply schoolyard hexes and jinxes. But nothing said that spells had to be harmful or complex to be dangerous and more than one dark wizard had found themselves on the way to trial after being taken down by a simple, efficient combination of the Jelly-Legs Jinx, Finger-Removing Jinx, and a Langlock, rendered unable to stand, speak, or even hold a wand. And more than one had learnt how hard it was to fight competently while vomiting slugs, having fish squirm out of their nose, or, worse, both.

He wasn't a saint. He never had been. He'd used Curses and Illegal Spells before and would again, if needed; but there was no point in even bothering to summon up Fiendfyre or break the law with an Unforgiveable when a few easy to cast spells could disable an opponent in seconds. A number of people had suggested that he did it because he didn't want to hurt anyone and, while there was some truth to that, he was an enforcer of the Law and most of the people he fought were criminals. If using curses made it easier to capture them, he would have used Curses without hesitation. In fact, the images people had formed of him sometimes surprised him; he'd used every single Unforgivable at some point or another, even if he'd been legally allowed to at the time.

He was just trying to be efficient.

"Outsider!" Amara shouted, jerking in every direction as if he might suddenly appear, her expression enraged, terrified, and frantic. With the claws of one of her hands, tore open the ropes binding one of the vampires and pulled him roughly to his feet. Twitching his wand towards him, Harry sent him back to his knees with a Jelly-Legs Jinx, which immediately made Amara leap away. "Show yourself! How long do you intend to toy with us!"

Standing a mere five feet outside of her reach but far beyond her senses, Harry shook his head. Sweeping his gaze over the downed vampires, he made another swift head count before focusing on Amara again.

He waited patiently for several seconds as her darting motions slowed. After a minute had passed, she'd calmed slightly, or, at least, had regained enough control of herself to slowly scan the area, searching for threats.

And then, in the blink of an eye, he Apparated right next to her, grabbed her head in one hand, and Apparated back to his previous position.

Cancelling his Silencing Charm, he drew back the hood of his cloak and looked a bit sadly at Amara's head, Splinched completely from the rest of her body. Her expression was one of a surprise, but only for a moment, before gravity took effect, drawing her jaw open wide.

"I'm sorry," Harry said, glancing at the incapacitated vampires around him, struck speechless by their leader's sudden death. "If I've given any of you the impression that I was toying with you, for that was not my intention. But as you can see, I am an old, old man, so it makes things easier on me if you can't run. This way, I'm less likely to miss."

Whether people considered it kind or cruel…in the end, he was just trying to be efficient.

Immediately, the vampires began to struggle and scream, trying to crawl away from him.

The sight just made Harry feel bad. He didn't like killing and, in his own world, he would just tied them all up and taken them to a holding cell until they could be fairly tried. However…it had become pretty obvious that this world was little like his own.

He wasn't an Auror anymore, or at least not one with any authority in this world. For all he knew, he didn't even exist in this reality. He had no actually authority to take them captive and where would he take them, if he did? Did the Ministry exist? He doubted it; the closest thing to a magical government that Justin's mind had revealed was the 'Council' which seemed very different from the Ministry. And if the Ministry didn't exist, the Guidelines for the Treatment of Non-Wizard Part-Humans probably didn't exist either, so he might not have any legal jurisdiction over vampires, even if he was an Auror—or this world's equivalent. For all he knew, assisting with the captivity of two young children wasn't something that he could actually arrest vampires for, even if he had authority.

Of course, he'd known that the moment he'd decided to fight. Taking action outside the law wasn't something new to him; he'd done it both as a child and when he thought that it would help save lives. But even so, it was…disconcerting to have no authority or pull of any kind anywhere in the world, which meant that he had no place to take these vampires, no right to do so, and, really, no one in this entire world would even know who he was. Legally, he should probably just let them all go right now.

—It went without saying that he couldn't do that. He didn't really care what happened to him or if it put him in danger, but Justin's masters and, presumably, their vampiric allies wanted those two kids. If he let them go now, they'd report back to their superiors and they'd be hunted down. Maybe even before he managed to find a safe place. Though, even if that was true, if they had really accepted his offer to leave in peace, he would have let them go, even if it did make things harder. There was a line between being practical and being heartless and killing people who hadn't done anything is part of it.

And yet…wasn't that kind of what he was considering doing right now? All they'd done was side with someone they were officially allied with—could he consider that a crime?

Perhaps. Justin's Masters hardly seemed like kind and upright people. He was pretty sure they weren't doing anything moral and he could probably say the same about the vampires that had willingly allied with them. But was that a good reason to kill these underlings that were just doing what they were told?

He could disable them without killing them. A Memory Charm probably wouldn't work, because someone was sure to eventually wonder where Harry and Elaine were, and probably fairly quickly, considering how important they apparently were, but there were other options. He could petrify them, leaving them still technically alive. He could remove their tongues so they could not speak, their hands so they could not write, and even their eyes so that reading their minds would be more difficult—though even all that combined wouldn't make it impossible to conveying a message if they were determined, as Ron had proved before St. Mungo's had patched him back up. He could transfigure them into some creature, reducing their minds to animal levels and insuring they would almost certainly never be found or transformed back; they could live out their lives that way, until something killed them or they otherwise died.

He could do all of that, easily.

But wouldn't it be kinder to just swallow his disgust, resign himself to being at least someone heartless, and kill them? He could live with that, if it meant saving two innocent children—he'd done worse than that before, as much as he hadn't wanted to. That was okay, too; he didn't need to be happy about how low he could sink to save people's lives, as long as their lives were saved.

"I'm sorry," He told them. "I know you have no reason to believe me, but I assure you, it won't hurt a bit."

And indeed, it was pretty obvious they didn't believe him. With a choked scream, the vampire that had been on his knees vomiting slugs rose and tried to run. Harry followed him with his wand, quiet and patient. It tried to remain upright, it really did, but it didn't even manage to leave the house before its body bowed as it coughed up another slug.

Without saying a word, Harry cast a Vanishing Charm on the momentarily still vampire—and everything from the base of its neck up promptly disappeared.

"I'm sorry," Harry repeated meaninglessly, feeling even older then he was. "But as I promised, you didn't feel a thing."

The headless body fell, collapsing with a dull thud.

**XxXXxX**

Some of the vampires had struggled. Some had screamed, some had resorted to meaningless threats, and some had even simply collapsed in acceptance and despair.

In the end, it didn't matter. Regardless of what they'd done, it hadn't changed anything.

Harry sighed, vanishing the last of the vampire's heads.

From start to finish, it had taken less than a minute to deal with all of them.

Which, sadly, still meant he was lagging behind.

There was a strange garbled sound, which drew his attention. The massive head of his transfigured snake feel to the ground with a smashing sound.

"Finally done, Justin?" He asked. He glanced once at the neatly cut remains of his two transfigurations. They'd be chopped to pieces and left scattered on the ground. He gestured at them and they began to change shape.

Justin swung his staff and they ignited in a sudden blaze of flame, which fell away just as quickly.

Harry tutted.

"Surrender, Justin. Cut your losses; don't make this any harder than it needs to be."

Justin was breathing hard and his face was covered in sweat, but he still smiled and nodded.

"My thoughts exactly," He said, taking his staff in both hands, swinging it like a baseball bat, and spitting something Harry didn't manage to hear, summoning a massive wave of flame into existence.

Harry gestured at himself and cast a Flame-Freezing Charm as the flames fell upon him, bathing him in fire. He stood there quietly for a moment as his eyes adapted to suddenly being in the middle of a raging inferno, which felt to him like no more than a warm summer breeze. Blinking quickly, he saw a shadowed blur through the flames and lifted his wand.

A sudden, bone-shakingly powerful gust of wind interrupted him before he could cast any spells, causing the flames to rise and brighten magnificently as it fanned them. Ignoring the heat, Harry was still knocked backwards by the force of the gale and nearly tripping as he stumbled. The increased brightness of the flames blinded him for a moment, but he snapped off a quick spell towards where he thought Justin had been, though Harry didn't think he managed to hit anything.

Flicking his wand towards his face, he darkened the lenses to make it easier to see, though spots of light still flickered across his vision, impairing it.

They did not, however, keep him from seeing the flames parting suddenly, as if something huge and invisible was barreling towards him at high-speed.

Harry had no idea what it was and was fairly certain he didn't want to find out, so he Apparated outside the house without a second thought—

Only to widen his eyes in surprise as the wall of the house exploded outwards in an explosion of shrapnel.

He Apparated again, this time to the top of the house, glancing down quietly as force of what he assumed has been Justin's spell carried the debris it had created until crashing into a tree with a deafening impact.

Suddenly feeling a little bit more wary, Harry waited a few cautious seconds before Apparating back to the ground and peering back into the house. He was ready to Apparate away again if another spell came hurtling at him, but he couldn't see anything through the sea of flames that was consuming the house. Entering carefully, he listened in silence, trying to hear Justin over the roaring of the fire, the sizzling of the burning corpses, and random popping and cracking of the heated wood.

For a moment, he thought he heard something, a scrambling sound as if Justin were moving through the rubble, but it suddenly fell silent—not as if he'd stopped moving, but as if the sound had literally been cut off abruptly halfway.

Taking a deep breath, he nearly choked at the smoke before casting a Bubblehead Charm on himself.

"Are you still here, Justin?" He asked, raising his voice. "Or did you just run?"

He received no response, but he hadn't expected one, either. However…he was fairly sure that Justin was still here. He'd seen the man's mind and he knew full well what fate's awaited the man if he simply tried to run without Dresden or Elaine—whether it was his Master's who caught up with him first or this 'White Council,' the result would be the same in the end.

—Of course.

Harry was on the other side of the train in an instant, nearly wincing as the sudden change in light rendered him blind again. He cleared up glasses, whose darkened lenses were now a hindrance, and gestured again, summoned a number of Bluebell Flames to cast some light instead of waiting until his eyes adjusted.

He didn't see anything, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Perhaps Justin really had just cut and run when he hadn't been able to find the children.

Then again, maybe he hadn't.

Harry pointed at the spot he'd left the children and silently countered the spell, gritting his teeth when nothing appeared.

Quietly looking around, he noticed some of the debris that had been created by the violent entrance of the train. He gestured at them silently and they immediately began to shift, each twisting into a different shape.

One grew a short covering of fur and sprouted a pair of wings before taking to the air as a bat. One swelled to massive size and grew a covering of feathers, before taking flight as a Buzzard. Another began to swell as strange bulges appeared along its body before it split into a squirming mass of cockroaches, even as a fourth exploded into a swarm of mosquitoes and a fifth into moths. The sixth widened and lengthened into the form of a viper and the seventh, the one that the vampire had coughed up an instant before Harry had taken its head, swelled and grew four legs, before shaking itself as it assumed the form of a dog.

Another gesture and they scattered.

"I'll just assume you're here, then, Justin," Harry continued, not missing beat during his casting. "And it seems you have the children, too. So let's play hide and seek. I'll warn you, though…I'm pretty damn good at hunting down wizards."

Moving to his side, the bloodhound began to sniff to earth, the pit viper rising to curl around it quietly. Settling on its companion's back, the viper began to slowly scan the area, its tongue flicking out to taste the air every once in awhile. The Bat and Buzzard circled above as the mosquitoes and moths swarmed through the air and the roaches scurried along the ground.

Harry stood quietly to the side, watching his team expectantly. This was the group that had successfully tracked down hundreds of wizards on the run. Most couldn't hide from them all for very long. There were always exceptions, though; maybe Justin would be one of them. Maybe he could hide from the buzzard's eyes and the bat's hearing and from the cockroach's ability to detect movement. Perhaps he could conceal his temperature from the pit viper and his scent from the bloodhound. For all he knew, he could keep the mosquitoes from sensing his body odor, heat, humidity, and carbon dioxide, and hide his pheromones from the Moth.

Maybe. It was possible; it would require quite a bit of work and knowledge of all the things you were trying to conceal yourself from, but it was _possible_. And perhaps Justin was an amazing secret agent that could hide from everything all at once and had experience with concealing himself from these types of creatures.

But Harry doubted it.

There was a stirring amongst the creatures; a short, considering moment. And then they began to swarm around an empty space. Harry watched for a moment before snorting out a breath and Apparating right outside the swarm, not bothering to remove his Invisibility Cloak.

"Hello, Justin." He said, lowering his hood. "I've found you."

After a moment, the air wavered, revealing a trio of circles clawed into the ground. Justin stood, expression focused, while Harry and Elaine were on their knees, hands outstretched. Harry's gaze flickered to them as Elaine's hands fell; he assumed she'd been the one in charge of the illusion.

"It's over, now, Justin; just let them go." He continued, moving to step forward—

Only to suddenly stop.

Frowning, he reached out with one hand and pressed it against the air at the edge of the circle, as if it were solid. Stepping back, gestured at it, he sent a simple Stunner at it to test it.

It passed through the first circle as if it wasn't even there, only to splash against the edge of the second. Dresden flinched as if he'd been hit, but didn't make a noisy.

"Interesting," Harry admitted. "The outer circle's meant to stop physical matter, isn't it? And the second is meant to shield against purely magical attacks, then? What does the third do, then?"

He pondered it for a moment before shaking his head.

"It doesn't matter. It won't stop me," He declared, completely certain. "It's taking energy to maintain both of these, isn't it? Mr. Dresden will run out of energy eventually—and I'm willing to bet that it'll take even less time if I continue to attack it."

"Probably," Justin said, unworried. He glanced dispassionately down at his thrall. "Keep that shield up, even if it kills you."

It took Harry a moment to realize Justin was being literal.

His eyes widened for a brief moment before narrowing in fury; the only reactions he would allow himself to have. He kept his face carefully blank and, after a moment, even the emotion in his eyes faded away. It wasn't as if he were hiding them—they had simply been locked away somewhere deep and side where Harry couldn't even feel them anymore. Both righteous fury and rage had their place, but neither was worth a thing in a hostage situation, so he quietly sealed them away with Occlumency.

For a long moment, he stared at Justin with his eyes and face clear of any human feeling, emotion fading away into something simultaneously disinterested and attentive; a completely alien expression on a completely human face.

"What do you intend to accomplish by doing this, DuMorne?" He asked, in a tone that contained nothing but that question. "Whether I attack or not, that shield will fall eventually, and then you will die. Killing the boy just means I will make you suffer horribly before you do."

His tone could have been bored. It wouldn't have been any different if he was taking about the weather or the news.

Justin lifted his hand and with a gesture, a tear opened in space itself. Through that gap, Harry could see the darkness of a forest. Harry didn't know what that portal was or where it was leading, which unnerved him, but he locked that away, too.

Justin, for his part, ignored the question completely.

"Elaine, we're leaving," He said. The blank-eyed girl rose without a word.

"You need him, Justin," Harry pointed out immediately. "Your Masters will be most displeased if he dies."

Justin sighed, wearily, not even looking at him.

"No doubt," He agreed. "I imagine I will be punished quite severely. But I should be able to survive as long as I have one. It's a shame to sacrifice one, but I think it's better to cut my losses while I still can."

Harry looked at him, eyes distant and cold and empty.

"There is no need to worry about that that, Justin." He assured, tone factual. "Because I am going to kill you before that becomes an issue."

Justin shrugged.

"Perhaps," He said, stepping through the gate.

Harry watched in silence as it closed.


	3. Odd Meetings

**The Master of Death**

**Odd Meetings**

**XxXXxX**

Harry gently prodded the 'wall' created by the first circle, frowning. Touching it didn't hurt or anything, but it was quite solid; he probably wouldn't be able to break it down with pure, physical strength, even if he could do so without hurting the boy.

He needed to hurry, both to save the boy and to have any hope of saving the girl, but at the same time, he had to be careful. He wasn't familiar with how these 'circles' worked and if he simply broke them, he might actually kill the boy.

He lowered his eyes to the circles that had apparently been burnt into the ground.

"Are you focusing your magic through the circles, then?" He wondered, speaking mostly to himself. "Then it's just like a wand…or one of your staves, I suppose. In that case, will the shields go down if I break the circle?"

He nudged the outermost circle with a toe. He couldn't do that physically, but…

With a twitch of his wand, a section of the outer circle vanished. Reaching out towards what had moments before felt like a wall of bricks, he felt nothing but empty air.

"There we go," He said, stepping forward. "Now…this one blocks magic, but what if I do this?"

Sliding a foot forward to scuff it over the circle, he frowned slightly as the transfiguration unraveled where it crossed the circle, revealing his new form. But with a strange feeling like a sudden release of air, the second circle fell. He re-transfigured his foot with a gesture and looked at the third circle.

"Now that I know what to do, this isn't so hard. Now…one more." Harry frown at it. "The first blocked physical things and the second blocked magic. Then this one blocks…what?"

Hesitating for a moment, he reached out to touch the boundary of the circle. For a moment, he thought his hand would pass cleanly through as his fingers felt nothing—but then he was stopped by the wall. He did not feel the resistance with his skin, but in a deep seated place down in his bones. Regardless, it kept him out.

Pondering his hand for a moment, he let his control lapse slightly and the human guise peeled away from his hand, revealing what lay beneath. Touching it to the edge of the circle again, he felt his skin press against it.

"Hm…I'm not sure what this circle was meant to block, but it certainly seems to block _me_." He frowned. He nodded to one of his transfigured creatures and the bloodhound rose from where it had been seated and strode forward, only to walk into the circle. It batted at it with one paw and made a series of doglike noises, before sitting down again and looking at him.

"Not just me," He sighed. "Then…"

Pointing his wand at the floor, the wood buckled suddenly, sending cracks throughout the wood. Stepping over the edge, he loomed over the boy, who looked at him with empty eyes and a blank face. Apparently, Justin hadn't given any order on what to do if he managed to get through the circles which, worryingly, the boy didn't seem able to figure out what to do without him.

That…was not a good sign.

"…I never checked what had been done to you, did I?" Harry said, tapping him quietly on the head and seamlessly sliding into his mind.

It wasn't hard. If the mind was a house, then Harry Dresden's door had been kicked in. The windows had been broken and someone had taken a sledgehammer to the walls; the entire house looked like someone had gotten really pissed off inside of it. Elaine's mind had been injured horribly as a result of whatever Justin had done, but not _this_ badly. When Justin had sought control of Dresden's mind, he'd had to fight for it, though that may have just made things worse in the end.

Harry felt pained just looking at it. He did what he could while on a time limit, but there wasn't much he could do without having a lot of time to work. He shifted quietly through the boy's mind, tending to minor injuries and putting scattered thought and memories in their place. Though he would normally respect the privacy of anyone he was giving a 'mental checkup' to, he looked to see if the boy had a family or home that he could take him too, or at least a safe place to put him.

He didn't. His parents were both dead; mother first and then his father years later. The only home he'd had since his father had died was currently burning down around him. He'd been sent to an orphanage, which he didn't have fond memories of and had gone to a public school; Harry noted the locations of both as places to Apparate the boy to if needed, even if they were a bit to out in the open for him to consider them safe. The school was probably empty this time of night; he could put the boy in one of the classrooms for the night if he had too.

He checked to see if he knew where Justin had gone to; the Nevernever, some sort of spiritual dimension filled with monsters and strange places of every kind. He didn't know what area of it Justin had entered, however, nor did he know where he was going.

Though, even if he had, neither of them had any idea how to _get_ there.

Getting frustrated, Harry continued to shift through the layers of his mind, trying to mind the source of all this damage. Justin had dominated his mind, he knew, but there wasn't a prolonged spell like the Imperius restraining his mind, or he would have sensed it by now. But there it was obvious that _something_ had been done to him and if he could find it he could at least cure the disease, even if he could only tend to the symptoms.

It took him a while to notice it amidst the damage; the words like scar tissue in the depths of his mind. The message was simple: To Obey. But though it was simple, it had been planted deep in the mind and spread virulently throughout, until that was all that he thought about or dreamt of. It was a hissing roiling mass of obedience that grew like a tumor in a mind that wanted nothing but to be free.

Harry hissed out a breath at the sight of it.

Something like this was…going to be tricky. To remove something like this painlessly and without causing any damage was almost impossible; it really was like a tumor. Removing it would take care and a gentle hand and a surgical knife.

The easiest way to get rid of it would be a simple Memory Charm—but it would have to be applied to pretty much everything the invasive thought had touched, less it take root again. It would certainly work, but he wasn't sure how much would be left when he was done. It would all depend on what Justin had focused on, but it was possible he'd have to cut out entire years or more, considering the damage.

That was the last resort, for obvious reasons. It was better than letting the damage continue to grow until it drove him insane, but it was hardly a desirable option.

But if he did want that to happen, he was going to have to do it the hard way. The idea Justin had put it his head was like a weed; if he wanted to get rid of it—and wanted it to _stay_ gone—he was going to have to take it out by the root. It would take time, but more than that, it was going to hurt.

Harry hesitated for a moment. He didn't know how to pursue Justin, so, for the moment, he couldn't rescue Elaine. His best bet at the moment was to find this 'White Council,' who apparently hunted people like Justin and ask them for help…but he had no idea who they were or where he could find them. He didn't doubt his ability to find out, given time, but time was running out. Elaine wasn't as damaged as Dresden was, but he had no way of knowing how long that would last.

But for the moment, this was the only thing he could do.

Extracting himself from the boy's mind for a moment, Harry sighed and reached into his pocket.

"I'm afraid I must apologize, because this is going to hurt a great deal," He said gravely. "I promise, however, that I will do all I can to minimize the pain and you will not be alone through this."

Taking out the Resurrection Stone, he turned it over three times.

"Malcolm and Margaret Dresden, was it?"

He knew it worked instantly, just by the sound, as their frail bodies shifted on the debris scattered floor of the ruined house. He lifted his eyes to find them standing protectively on either side of the boy, neither ghost nor truly flesh. Less substantial then actual people but much more so then ghosts, they stood; souls nearly made solid.

The man, Malcolm, was a tall, thin man with dark hair and steady blue eyes. He was young, younger then he probably had been when he'd died, wearing worn jeans and boots. He wore a jacket over his red and white flannel shirt. He looked…very ordinary.

The woman was not. She was a tall woman, around six feet, in a royal blue dress. Her hair was dark, as were her eyes, and her face was sharp. While he wouldn't say she was exactly pretty, she was definitely striking.

The man's eyes held a wealth of emotion for the boy at his feet and they swirled within his eyes—love, pain, sorrow, and more. There was as much love and pain as any father could have in this situation, but he kept it controlled, in a way. Held back, for the boy's sake.

Or, perhaps, for the woman's.

The same emotions were in her eyes—the same thoughts and the same feelings and all the love of a parent. He would not say it was any more or any less then the father's, even.

But it was not controlled in the slightest.

It blazed freely, a fire in her eyes, unconstrained and unhindered, to the point that Harry worried that it might burn her. If she was alive, she would have torn apart the ones who'd done this, or else die trying. She would have fallen into madness, if she'd had too, and to murder and torture and more. Her anger wouldn't be constrained by morals, laws, or danger and she would go to any lengths necessary to accomplish what she felt needed to be done.

Harry admired that, to a point. He respected that type of resolve and power; love at its most beautiful and most frightening. But he also thought that she might have been more than a bit crazy, to have eyes like that. Perhaps not the ranting, raving madness of the insane, but the dangerous madness that that could see what was wrong, understand what was wrong, and do it anyway, if it felt it had need too.

But then, he'd been that way more than once himself, when dark wizards had tried to strike at him through the people he loved. He stared back at her calmly, un-intimidated.

"I know you, Outsider," She said, surprising him.

"Do you?" He asked, blinking. "I'm afraid I cannot say the same, nor see how that is possible."

She narrowed her eyes at him angrily.

"We have met before," She said. "Do not tell me you have forgotten what you did!"

Harry narrowed his eyes at her considering that statement for a moment.

"Perhaps not forgotten." He mused under his breath. "Maybe I simply haven't gotten to that point in my future—or your past—yet."

He shook his head, quickly.

"Regardless, say no more. If this is what I think it is, then telling me anything else could cause a time paradox. Instead of worrying about our potential pasts and futures, let's focus on our mutual present."

All expression fell from his face.

"I take it you know what has happened to your son, then, Margaret Dresden?"

"We know," Malcolm said, hand on his son's face. "We saw it all and couldn't do a thing."

There was anger in his tone, but it wasn't directed at him.

Malcolm Dresden blamed himself.

Margaret's expression faltered as she reached out to place a hand on her husband's shoulder, but she hesitated, looking at him uncertainly.

"I can save him." Harry said, making both of their head's snap towards him. Malcolm opened his mouth, but Margaret touched his shoulder drawing his attention for a moment. She caught his eyes for a moment and apparently that was enough.

"At what cost?" Margaret demanded, apparently taking to role of negotiator. The tone of her voice made it obvious that she was the one who would pay any debts.

"Free of charge." Harry stated flatly.

"Nothing is _ever_ free."

Harry looked at her, wondering what type of life she'd lived to say those words with such conviction.

"If that is what you believe," He began. "Then should we meet again, we shall discuss the matter. But do you think now is the time?"

Margaret's eyes widened in realization before she smiled bitterly.

"Very well then," She said. "Shall we consider my debt to you already paid, then?"

Harry wondered what that meant, but couldn't risk questioning it, because it may well be knowledge from his future that he wasn't meant to know.

God, he hated time travel. It was always like this.

"Very well," He said, swallowing a sigh. "Malcolm and Margaret Dresden, stay with your son while I repair his mind."

The pair of them nodded in unison and an effort of will was all it took to make them visible to others.

And then Harry fell into the depths of a broken boy's mind.

Even if Justin's commands were like weeds, it wasn't as simple as pulling them out of the ground, because the ground in this case was a poor boy's mind. Tearing it out would cause even more damage and pain, even if it would remove the compulsion.

He had to be more careful then that. More precise. Causing damage was inevitable, but he had to choose exactly where to cut, what to remove.

Part of it was like cutting with a scalpel and part of it was like untangling knots. At times, it was like taking apart a wall piece by careful pieces, but sometimes it was like a battle between armies as he either tried to attack or defend certain positions. He had to keep it from spreading even as he pushed it back, even as he get the traps and fail-safes put in the boy's mind from harming either of them.

It wasn't easy, especially while he could still hear said boy screaming in the background. If this was a physical operation, he could have dulled the pain—but it wasn't the entire thing was literally all in his head. He wasn't doing anything that would hurt him physically and there weren't any pain receptors in the brain even if he was.

Even _he_ wasn't sure why it caused pain, then. There was a reason why the Mind had its own places in the Department of Mysteries; not even wizards could say for sure exactly how it worked, especially in regards to the soul, which they also didn't truly understand. Legilimency was a way to navigate and interpret it, but that didn't mean he knew everything about it.

All he knew is that it was hurting the boy. Worse, he couldn't let himself move faster, for fear of making a mistake in his haste.

All he could do was blot out the screams while he pried the foreign influences from the boy's mind. He finished one section and immediately moved on to the next, again and again.

Wrapped up in his work, he wasn't sure how long he'd worked before he reached the end—probably not all that long. He silently unraveled the last stain until it was something so basic and formless that it could not be used to create an idea, tended with wounds where he could, and quietly left.

He took a deep breath, for a moment enjoying being wholly within himself.

Then he gestured towards the ground, knowing without even looking what would be there. The boy's vomit faded from existence immediately and he knelt by his side, lifting his trembling face with one hand. A wave of his wand erased the tears from his face and he glanced up at the boy's parents.

"That went better than I expected," He admitted, rising.

"Better then you expected!" Margaret hissed. "It sounded like you were torturing him! What did you do!"

"I removed Justin's compulsion from his mind and nothing more," He assured her. "You have my word on that."

She opened her mouth to say something scathing, but Malcolm put a hand on her shoulder, nodding at his son.

Harry Dresden looked up at the shades of his parents with barely seeing eyes, expression dizzied and almost drunken.

"D-dad…?" He asked, voice raw from screaming. "You're…"

"I'm here, son." Malcolm said, kneeling by his side. "I'm here."

"Am I…dead…?"

Malcolm flashed a sudden grin, touching the side of his son's face.

"No, Harry. You're still alive."

Harry watched quietly, several steps away, not willing to interrupt them.

"Is there anything that belongs to him in this house?" He murmured to Margaret. "If so, I can still fetch it. Otherwise, I intended to just let the house burn down."

"There's nothing," She whispered back. "Or at least, nothing that wouldn't just cause pain."

But then she hesitated, drawing his attention away from the reunited father and son.

"What is it?" He asked.

"Don't you intend to pursue Justin?" She tried to change the subject.

"Of course. But I have my own ways of finding people. He will return to this world eventually and I will hunt him down." Harry shrugged and opened a hand at her. "It's what I do."

"Why not simply open a gate into the Nevernever?"

"This is the first I have ever been in this world, from my perspective. I do not know how, if it is indeed possible for me."

Margaret hesitated again, debating with herself.

"As his mother, I can't very well let the girl he loves be dragged away," She muttered before raising her voice. "Very well; there is one this DuMorne has that would be useful to my son; if I tell you where it is, will you bring it to him?"

"Of course," Harry replied, shrugging easily. "Just tell me where it is. If you know somewhere safe, I'll take the boy there, too."

"In the basement of this house, you'll probably find a human skull. DuMorne had it, last time we'd met, at least."

"A skull?" He asked, raising an eyebrow. "I've seen stranger gifts then human skulls, but may I ask why this particular skull is important?"

"Does it matter?" Margaret demanded. Harry shrugged and shook his head, but silently decided to take a look at it when he found it. "If you find it and give it to my son, I'll make a deal with you."

Harry silently let his eyebrow rise a bit higher.

"I know how to get to the Nevernever," She said. "And I can guide you through it as well. Give my son the skull and I'll guide you to Justin DuMorne."

"…" Harry looked at her for a silent second.

And then he was in the basement.

**XxXXxX**

The circle in the center of the room wasn't activated, but he made a point of scuffing his feet over it anyway, on general principle. The rest of the basement was fairly ordered, including a number of organized, well marked containers and recipes that Harry assumed were related to potions. He pondered taking them, but glanced over a few of the recipes, blinked, and shook his head at how strange they were to him.

Maybe the results were similar, but the process was obviously fairly different in this world.

He did a minor glance around for clues, but naturally, there was no letters detailing all of his evil plans or any of his top secret hiding places with convenient notes detailing how to get there, but things like this were rarely ever that simple.

Then he looked at the skull that sat alone on its own shelf.

As he did before picking up any obviously creepy object, he cast a few spells, just to make sure it wouldn't kill him or something. On one hand, Margaret honestly seemed to have only her son's wellbeing in mind. But at the same time, he wasn't quite sure how the boy's wellbeing and _his_ wellbeing coincided, and it was pretty obvious they hadn't had a very good past/future relationship. Also, even if he'd saved her son, he'd done it in such a way that could misinterpreted as torture.

A suspicious woman and loving mother like Margaret might see the benefit of him picking up a lethally cursed object.

He didn't find anything—which didn't necessarily mean nothing was there—except traces of some type of magic. Slowly, he reached out to touch it.

Nothing happened.

Relieved and a little let down, he lifted it in one hand and observed it closely. Touching, he could say for sure that it was magical and hadn't simply been in close proximity to magic, but he still couldn't say for sure what it was—and he certainly wasn't going to give a strange object unknown nature to a child, especially one that had unknown magical properties and had formerly belong to a dark wizard.

Stuff like that had tried to kill him with some frequency, after all.

"What are you?" He murmured, turning it in every direction in his hands, as if he could reveal all its mysteries by looking at it from different angles.

The skull quivered in his hands.

He frowned at it, considering.

"Can you hear me?" He asked, but received no reply.

He pondered it for a moment, before speaking.

"Justin's gone," He said. "Also, the house is on fire."

After a moment, orange lights flickered to life in the skulls eye sockets.

"Yeah?" It asked.

Harry walked over to the stairs, holding the skull so that it faced up the stairs and could see through open door at the top.

"Ouch," It said. "Justin's gonna be _pissed_. Who are you?"

"The reason he ran."

The skull whistled somehow, without having any lips.

"So you're fishing me out of the rubble? That's cool." It said.

"Does this happen to you a lot?" Harry asked.

"Sorta. It's how Justin got me, too. So…you my new boss, then?" It asked.

"I'm afraid not," He replied. "I'm just fetching you for the boy upstairs."

"Harry?" It asked, and for a moment he thought it was referring to him, before remembering the boy.

He nodded.

"Yes; his mother asked me to get you for him."

The skull's candlelight eyes flickered to the left uncertainly.

"Harry's mom is dead," It told him.

"As is his father," Harry said. "Nevertheless, both of them are upstairs right now."

"Are you a Necromancer?" The skull wondered, sounding kind of worried.

"I suppose I am, in a way," Harry admitted.

It looked at him closely for a long minute.

"Who are you?" It asked. "You can't be with the White Council, but you obviously scared off Justin…but you weren't here to take me. Why are you here, then?"

Harry shrugged.

"I'm here because I was summoned," He said.

"Summoned?" The eyes of the skull looked at him in confusion, looking him over slowly. "What do you—"

It looked at his shadow. Then back up at his face. Then down to the shadow again for a long moment before snapping up and focusing on his face.

"Oh." It said quietly. "Yeah, I can see why Justin would run if he botched your Summon."

Harry sighed.

"As for who I am," He continued. "I'm—"

"The Master of Death, right? Justin told me he was gonna try summoning you, but I told him not too. I heard about what you did the _last_ time you were summoned. Nasty stuff—er, I mean, nice job with that."

"Please, don't elaborate; from my relative position in time, the chronological past is still my future and I have yet to personally experience it," Harry recited. "Therefore, such knowledge may cause a time paradox, which nobody wants."

"Oops. Sorry," It said, seeming honestly scared of having angered him.

"It's not a problem," He assured it. "And yes, I am the Master of Death, though that's hardly my favorite title. You can just call me Harry Potter, if you want."

"You got it, boss. Nice human form, by the way—I've never seen one that human before."

Harry smiled at it, not sure what to say to that.

"You don't seem to be cursed or anything, so I suppose you're safe enough for a child to possess," He mused, preparing to apparate. "Hold on for a moment, please."

**XxXXxX**

"Whoa!" It said as they reappeared. "Spatial Relocation? Damn, boss."

Harry shrugged, shifting his gaze to Margaret, who looked at the speaking skull nervously.

"As we agreed, I retrieved it." He said, stepping towards her.

The skull's candle flame eyes shifted to the shade and did a double take.

"You're not a ghost!" It exclaimed. "What did you do, rip her out of the afterlife?"

"Actually, yes" Margaret said dryly. "Yes, he did."

The skull gulped nervously.

"Looks like Ol' Justin summoned something he couldn't put down, am I right?" He said, his tone full of fake cheer. "So, uh…what happens next?"

Harry moved to place the skull down beside the boy, who was still on his knees. Dresden looked at it silently for nearly thirty seconds, blinking blurring eyes, before widening them in recognition.

"Bob…?"

Bob the skull spun towards him of his own power, peering up at him.

"Ouch, Harry, what happened to you?" It asked, tone completely serious.

"Justin had bound his will," Harry said simply. "I fixed it."

"Oh," Bob said, hesitating. "Uh, if you did it wrong, you might just have made it worse."

"I know my way around the Human mind," Harry stated. "I assure you, I have lots of experience. All traces of Justin's compulsion are gone, now."

Bob's eyes dimmed to pinpricks in a strange expression that was hard to interpret without a face to go with it. He looked at Dresden for a long moment before nodding, eyes returning to normal.

"Well?" Margaret demanded. Harry glanced at her, but couldn't begrudge her wanting a second opinion when it came to the health of her own son. He'd have wanted a second opinion to.

"He's as well as he possibly could be, given the circumstances." Bob glanced at both the Harry's. "There's, uh…nothing _wrong_ with him, if that's what you're asking."

Margaret sighed, relieved.

"Very well, Outsider," She began, moving to her son's side. "You have kept your word on all accounts. It is only fair that I keep mine."

Kneeling, she lifted ghostly fingers to carefully touch his face. They weren't solid enough to actually make contact, but something about her touch drew the boy's attention.

"Harry…?" She whispered. "Do you know who I am, sweetie?"

The boy slowly lifted a hand, as if to cover his mother's with his own, but it slid neatly through.

"Mom?" He asked. "Is that…really you?"

"It's me," She said sadly. "I'm sorry, Harry. I'm so sorry."

"…For what?" He son asked, expression pained and confused.

"For…" Margaret cut herself off as she glanced at the older Harry. "For everything. I've caused you a lot of pain…and I think I'll be the cause of even more in the future."

Margaret smiled, but it was bitter to the core.

"Maybe even right now."

"What? I don't understand…"

"Justin's alive," She continued, and the words made the boy flinch. "He's alive and he has Elaine. Worse, if he manages to get away completely, sooner or later someone will figure out that you're alive. They'll come looking for you. They'll probably find you, too. I can't stop them…but I can help you delay them. And I can help you save Elaine, too."

The boy's eyes had become resolved the moment she'd said the girl's name, and Harry knew that he would do whatever his mother told him if it meant he could save her.

"What do I have to do?" Dresden asked, quietly.

"Justin escaped off into the Nevernever. We can still track him down, but we'll have to follow him in—and to do that, we'll need _you_ to open a gate for us."

"That wasn't part of our agreement," Harry interjected. "You didn't say the boy would be involved."

"I said I knew how to get to the Nevernever." Margaret said. "And I said I would guide you through it. I will keep my word. But I never said I would teach you how to open a gate."

"Don't you want your son to be safe, though?" Harry questioned. "Why not just teach me, and keep him from having to get involved at all?"

"I do not see how I would be keeping him safe, if I gave you any more power then you already have." She said sharply. "So long as you remain bound to this world, there is at least one place for him to run, should you betray us. My son will remain in this world. He will open the door and nothing more."

"So you still don't trust me?" He asked quietly.

"No," She replied, blunt and to the point.

"We don't have time for this—" Harry began.

"I disagree." Margaret said. "I think Justin will find travelling here a bit more dangerous then he remembers. Where my son is, his Godmother is never far behind. Justin's a snake, but he won't get past her that easily."

"Could she kill him herself?"

"If she felt it was within the bounds of our pact, yes. But I doubt that will happen; I probably could have gotten a better deal from her, in hindsight," Margaret said, looking down at her son, one hand lifted to her belly. "But I was in a bit of a rush at the time. Fleeing for your life will do that."

Harry didn't bother asking how that had gone. When a dead woman says she had been fleeing for her life, it's fairly safe to assume something had gone wrong.

He took a deep breath.

"Will you get the gate open in time for me to save the girl?" He asked.

She nodded once.

He slowly exhaled, calming himself.

"Very well. Do as you wish—so long as you keep your end of the bargain." He stated, turning and walking away to give her the privacy she'd all be demanded.

He stopped to stand next to Malcolm Dresden.

"Nice wife you have there," He commented.

"She's something, isn't she?" Malcolm agreed with a smile.

Harry glanced over his shoulder.

"She's something," He agreed. "As I am a gentleman, I shall refrain from saying what, though I assure you that I am thinking it."

**XxXXxX**


	4. Different Tracks

**The Master of Death**

**Different Tracks**

Stepping into the Nevernever was like leaving the desert. It was like the world had been dry of magic all along and he hadn't noticed—until he plunged head first into the ocean. Energies and forces flowed past him, above him, and beneath his feet, vibrant and full and radiating with power.

They were in a forest, with crystal leaves in all the vibrant shades of autumn. The trees, he noticed, had no visible roots, and seemed to merge seamlessly with the ground at their base. It wasn't dark in the forest, though it was nighttime on the other side of the portal; or, at least, it seemed like everything was illuminated by the sun, even though the trees canopy hide the sky completely and should have blocked the light.

Harry hummed quietly as he took that in, accepting it. His tracking team followed him quickly into the portal and immediately began scanning the area.

"That way, I suppose," He said as they decided on a direction.

"Wait," Margaret said, stopping him. She narrowed her eyes as she ghosted silently around the area. She rose off the ground, stopping to look at the tree leaves before lowering again. She shook her head. "As I thought, Justin will have run into some trouble. This must have been his last resort, or he'd have taken a different route."

"How so?" Harry asked.

"The leaves," She said. "I recognize this area; it's near the border of Winter. All the leaves in this point towards the border…I never found out it that was supposed to serve as a guide or a warning, though. Either way, there are a series of seven bridges over seven rivers. Mab, the Queen of Winter, placed one of her trolls under each of the bridges and they make a point of trying to eat anyone that crosses."

"Trolls?" Harry asked, raising an eyebrow. "An interesting choice of guards, though I can see how it would be effective. Are they strong?"

Margaret shrugged.

"There trolls," She said. "More than that, they're trolls chosen by Mab. She wouldn't waste her strongest ones by putting them here, but I'm sure they're all mighty enough for members of their kind. But how strong they are isn't the point. If they kill invaders, that's fine, but if the invaders kill _them_, here in the land she owns and which they rightfully protect, she can claim that it's within her rights to deal with them as she sees fit and nobody on the Accords would be able to argue."

"So if we kill them, it will be off with our heads?"

She shrugged again.

"Probably not, but she could threaten us with it before offering a deal in return for forgiveness, which may or may not be worse. It'd be more profitable, that way, because she'd gain the services of a warrior, or a group of warriors, that can defeat at least one troll."

"But she'd lose a troll in the process," He pointed out.

"So? Mab can get more trolls any time she wants. Even if someone killed all seven trolls, she could just have a new batch of changelings made whenever she felt like it."

Harry filed that away.

"It would be easier to just avoid them entirely, then. Will they bother us if we cross the rivers in some other way?"

"No," She said, shaking her head. "You can even just cross under a veil and they won't chase you if you drop it on the other side, as long as they don't catch you on the other side. That's probably what Justin intends to do. The river's are…unpleasant, however, so I don't recommend swimming."

"I didn't intend to." He said, gesturing. He glanced around quickly, memorizing the place in case he needed to apparate back here, and then gestured with his wand, unraveling the transmigrated animals. "Lead the way."

She glanced him in confusion and he returned her gaze with a mild gaze, taking silent amusement as her eyes widened as he began to rise into the air.

"I trust you can lead us there by air? An old man like myself is hardly in good enough shape to take long walks through a forest, so I prefer to fly."

Margaret silently followed him into the air. Harry carefully navigated the tree branches while Margaret just let herself slide straight through them. As he rose above the trees, he found the sky stained in lovely shades of purple, red, and blue, as if it were sunset.

That would require there be a sun, however, and he couldn't see one anywhere.

"Let's go," He said, shaking away the thought. He drew his cloak around him before making Margaret invisible to everyone but him with a flex of his will. He let his head exposed so Margaret could see him in turn, and together they flew above the treetops, crystalline leaves passing quickly below.

Slowly, the trees beneath them began to change, shifting from the colorful splendor of autumn to the empty skeletons of winter before fading completely, leaving behind dead, barren ground. The temperature began to drop extraordinarily quickly, going down what felt like fifty degrees in several minutes. As soon as he started seeing his own breath, Harry cast a Warming Charm on himself.

He came to a halt a split second later and tilted his head at the sight before him.

It was snowing hard, but it was like there was an invisible wall separating it from him. As if worried of crossing some line, it stopped uniformly a foot in front of him, settling on the ground without letting a single flake cross over.

Carefully reaching out with one hand, he made sure there wasn't _actually_ an invisible wall there, before glancing at his companion.

"Is this the place," He asked, squinting into the storm. He thought he might have seen something there, but visibility was so poor he couldn't be sure what it was. He kind of hoped it was a bridge, though.

Margaret frowned, looking at the snow warily.

"This is the place," She said, sounding hesitant. "But, it's not supposed to snow this hard here…This is the very edge of Winter and the weather reflects it; I've never seen it get more than a bit on the cold side. Something's wrong and I don't know why."

Harry pondered that for a moment before shrugging.

"I don't intend on staying long," He said, drawing his hood up to hide his face as well as shield it. "And I must admit I'm not all that curious about the weather. Let's finish this before it becomes an issue and leave."

Diving into the storm, he faltered slightly at the force of the wind, before forcing himself to stabilize. He was glad for the make that he could see through his invisibility cloak even with it covering his face completely; with winds like this, the snow may well have _hurt_. A hidden movement with his wand caused the snow to slide off the cloak instead of sticking to it, keeping his vision as clear as possible as he flew towards the blurred shape.

He had a hard time making it out until he was almost directly above it. He tried to look for Justin, but he couldn't see anyone. It could have been the storm…or maybe there just wasn't anything to see.

Narrowing his eyes, he lowered slowly until he covered horizontally less than a meter above ground. Searching quickly as he hovered parallel to the ground, he swept the area nearby until he found what he was looking for.

It was faint and half filled with snow, but…there were definitely footprints in the snow. Shifting himself into a vertical position without moving a muscle, he frowned into the distance down the length of the bridge.

Putting a hand in his pocket, brushing the stone within—and with a firm effort of will, dragged Margaret right to his side. She looked around with wide eyes, not seeing him.

"I've found their tracks," He said, invisible by her side. She started suddenly, which he took some amusement in. "But before I pursue them, I figured I'd ask for your opinion."

She scowled at where she thought he was, but missed him by several feet. After a moment, she looked around, her face falling into a tense mask as her gaze fell to the tracks. She followed them with her eyes down the bridge until they were out of sight.

"He's veiled himself and the girl," She said, sounding certain. "Otherwise they'd have been attacked. You'll be attacked too, if they see you or if you make too much noise."

"That will not be a problem." He said, pondering the bridge. "But if I can't make noise or let myself be seen…I suppose it goes without saying that they'll attack if I make too much noise taking Justin down? Hm…well, it's not as though I'd particularly mind if he were attacked by trolls, but I can't risk Elaine. I'll save her, then deal with Justin."

Margaret glanced at him once, apparently wondering about something.

"And how do you intend to deal with his death curse?" She asked, as if she already knew the answer.

Harry slowly lifted an eyebrow.

"Explain," He ordered.

She seemed caught between sighing and shooting him a smirk.

"His death curse," She repeated. "The curse he will cast as his life slips away—all the energy he has, everything that gives him life, released in a single spell as he dies."

Harry didn't bother asking if it was dangerous. The fact that it was called a 'death curse' kind of implied that.

"Will it endanger the girl?" He asked instead.

Margaret shrugged.

"That depends entirely on what he does with it," She told him. "As long as you have the power, you can do anything you want with your death curse. It could by an explosion, if he was uncreative. Or a curse on you or the girl of some kind. Or even a message to someone. Whatever he wanted that he thought was worth spending his last spell on."

"I'll take that as a maybe." Harry decided, pursing his lips. After a long moment, he nodded. "Very well; I know how to deal with things like that. Before he has a chance to curse me…he will already be dead."

Gesturing towards his eyes, he cast a spell Ron had taught him… it must have been more than a hundred years ago. Harry silently marveled at that as his senses sharpened. The Supersensory Charm was a pretty simple one, but being simple had never kept spells from being useful. Ron had used it to get his driver's license and to drive cars in general, to make up for when he occasionally forgot to look at his rear view and side mirrors.

With the senses this charm granted, not looking behind you while driving wasn't an issue. It went without saying that it was just as useful, if not more so, in battle and in other situations. As his eyesight improved, he was able to see the individual snowflakes as they fell and witness them in all their shapes and beauty. He heard the wind as it passed through the world, rustling the branches of trees that were now so very far away. If not for his cloak and the spells he'd laid upon it, he'd have felt the chill of the storm with startling clarity and the touch of snowflakes and of the wind.

It was truly a marvelous spell and one of his favorites, even if having enhanced senses could be used against him.

He looked at the tracks and followed them with his eyes, his gaze piercing the veil of the snow. Rising into the air again, he followed the tracks across the bridges, watching as they became fresher. It was at the beginning of the fourth bridge that they stopped. Before his eyes, more prints slowly came into existence, not as if being made by invisible feet, but as if slowly fading into existence. The heel of the prints appeared first, cut off from the rest of the foot for a moment before that too became visible.

Watching it, Harry guess it was another illusion, probably centered on the caster. It wouldn't make the prints disappear, but it hid the ones immediately around Justin and Elaine. Justin must have figured that if someone noticed the prints, they at least wouldn't know exactly where they were.

It was nothing but a paper defense, though, and Justin probably knew it. Or, at least, it was the moment someone was looking for him; he'd probably hoped that no one would try looking for him in the first place.

Harry seriously pondered the fact that it had started snowing in an area that supposedly rarely saw snow, just as Justin was trying to move discreetly. That was the type of luck that tended to make him suspicious, but for the moment, he could only be grateful for it.

Well, that, and hope that it wouldn't suddenly turn on him.

Still, in the snow, it was easy enough to find Justin. Now that he knew where to look, he could see the flaws in the illusion. It went without saying that when creating an illusion, the more things you had to keep track of, the harder it was. Making yourself invisible was relatively easy. Hiding an entire area, however, was much, much more complex—especially when it was raining or snowing. In weather like this, Harry probably would have used spells to keep people from consciously recognizing him, rather than make such an illusion, for one simple reason.

He didn't think there was anyone in the world that could accurately keep track of every snowflake in an area and model how it fell.

At the border of Justin's illusion, snowflakes suddenly shifted position, all of the snow falling in the same way. It was like someone had recorded a section of the snow storm for five second and then replayed it again and again. By watching where the illusion didn't match with everything around it, he silently mapped out the borders of the illusion, figuring it was a semi-sphere around two and a half to three meters in radius, with Justin and Elaine almost certainly at the center.

A careful glance at the footprints and he figured that Elaine was on the left and Justin on the right, but they were standing within easy reach of each other.

Perfect.

He drew in a slow breath, readying himself to end this. He ran through his options again quickly, making sure there wasn't a better one, before shaking his head. Average human reaction time was one hundred fifty to three hundred milliseconds, but he was sure that he could kill Justin in less than a hundred this way.

He apparated on the exhale, into the midst of the illusion, less than a meter behind where he knew Elaine and Justin to be. His already outstretched hands had to move mere centimeters to touch them. He ended up grabbing Elaine by the back of the neck and Justin by the shoulder and—

He skipped the remaining bridges, suddenly appearing on the other side. Elaine and Justin were both visible now, and he let go of Justin's shoulder, causing him to tumble to the snow.

More than three bridges behind him, a brain hung in the air for a fraction of a second before being caught in gravity's hold and falling to the ground, splinched quite neatly out of Justin's head.

Elaine immediately whirled on him, freezing for several seconds when she saw nothing. It took the poor girl's violated mind awhile to just make thoughts connects, before she raised her hands—

Which promptly dropped to her side as her eyes began to droop. Harry shifted his arm around her back to keep her from falling as she sagged down in a bewitched sleep.

"None of that, my dear," He whispered. He quickly looked her up and down, making sure she was physically unharmed, before nodding in satisfaction. Of course, he already knew that her mind wasn't in anywhere near as good condition, but he could fix that when he was in a safer place.

A sudden roar behind him drew his attention, as the guardian trolls finally reacted. The huge, ugly creatures clambered onto the bridges as he turned to make sure they weren't a threat. They quickly gathered around Justin's displaced brain, sniffing the air like dogs, before turning, looking at him.

Or rather, since he was still invisible, at Justin's corpse and Elaine.

Harry contemplated them for a moment, before deciding it wasn't particularly important. He was about to apparate back to the portal when another, even stranger sound, made him hesitate.

Clapping. Slow, deliberate applause that echoed strangely. At the sound of them, the trolls quieted with a sudden whimper, like fearful, obedient dogs.

Glancing quickly to make sure the source wasn't dangerous, he saw one of the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen in his entire life. Tall, slender, and beautiful in a way that made it obvious that she couldn't possibly be human, she was seated side-saddle on a pitch-black horse. Her red hair curled delicately down to her hips, causing her flawless white skin to stand out all the more in contrast. Her cheekbones were high as her face was such that he could not tell precisely what age she was, except that she was neither young nor old nor anything but stunning. Her golden eyes were catlike and her lips were full and red. Her flowing gown was a beautiful green and she wore it like a supermodel.

He stared for a long moment, surprised and slightly confused, but was about to dismiss her and leave when she spoke.

"Impressive as ever, Harry Potter," She said before he could apparate.

He stopped again, curiosity warring with logic, before slowly drawing down the hood of his cloak and shrugging just enough out of it that it revealed him but kept it on his shoulders. He said nothing, looking at her quietly and uncertainly. Margaret and Bob the skull had both recognized him, but they'd been angry or fearful. This woman didn't sound like she was either.

He wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not.

The trolls conversed among themselves in their grunting language, surprising Harry slightly, both with the noise and with the fact that he could understand it. They contemplated whether or not they should try to eat him and the girl, whether the body on the ground was too cold to be tasty yet, and whether they would get in trouble for eating them.

Without even looking behind him, he replied to their words.

"Leave," He said in troll, a low pitched grunt, followed by a click of his teeth and a higher pitched grunt. They fell silent at once, staring at him openly like he was the strangest thing any of them had ever seen, before the largest one, the apparent leader, grunted back something impudent with an emphasizing snarl.

Harry exhaled slowly in impatient annoyance, turning towards them as he drew up his hood again, so that he could not be seen from behind. He allowed his transfiguration to unravel and looked at them for a moment, his many eyes firm. He opened two of his mouths so that they could see his teeth and marvel out how they were not-teeth and how he was cold where the world was warm and wrong where it was right.

"Leave," His third mouth repeated as his teeth whirled around it.

They stared.

Then they left, whimpering yet again. He stared after them like a disapproving teacher at his foolish students and shook his head.

He snorted derisively as he transfigured himself back to being human.

"Trolls," He said, shaking his head. "Even if you can make them understand you, the only language they really understand is strength. At least they understood quickly, this time; I do so hate having to get violent over silly things like this."

The woman sighed behind them.

"Children will be children," She said, sounding dismissive. "Foolish and young."

Harry hummed quietly in agreement, turning towards her again.

"I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage, my lady," He said politely. "Who might you be?"

She slowly smiled, revealing dainty canines and he knew even before she spoke that she wouldn't answer his question.

"Oh, I am just a messenger for my Queen," She said.

Harry felt something move behind him, but recognized the feeling as well.

"Her name is Lea," Margaret whispered into his ear, finally catching up with him. "Leanandsidhe. And she is no mere messenger. Let her see me."

Harry looked at her out of the corner of his eye, nodded slightly, and it was so.

Lea's eyes widened in surprise as her head snapped towards Margaret, but then a slow smile began to spread across her face as she looked down at Justin's corpse.

"My, my…I think I understand now. As expected from the Master of Death, even the fallen know no surcease. It has been quite some time since last we met, poppet, and I must admit I had not expected us to ever meet again. But it is good to see you again, child."

"Lea," Margaret replied, nodding to her. "May I ask what you're delivering?"

"Just an invitation, my dear," Lea said, her eyes turning slowly towards Harry. A letter was held delicately between the fingers of her right hand, though it hadn't been there before. "From Queen Mab."

Harry furrowed his brow, beginning to get annoyed. It was really getting troublesome how everyone knew him when he didn't know them. He was going to have to make a check list of everything he needed to do to preserve the time stream.

Still, he nodded in acceptance, beckoning her forward with one hand. When she handed him the letter, he immediately flipped it open.

The contents surprised him.

It wasn't long, but he found himself reading it again and again. He brought one hand to his pursed lips covering his mouth as he worked his jaw. He didn't stop reading the note until he noticed Margaret try to move behind him to sneak a peak, at which point he snapped it closed and slid it smoothly into his cloak.

When Margaret shot him a suspicious look, he ignored her completely. The letter wasn't for her and she had no real right to read it in the first place.

Instead, he just stood there for a second, hand concealing his mouth and hiding any expressions that he might not be able to control. He kept his eyes closed for the same reason, as he took a calming breath and relied on his Occlumency to get himself completely under control.

That…no one should know all those things about him. There was no one alive or dead who knew all of that except him, and all the different people that had the scattered pieces were a dimension away and unlikely to talk.

The only realistic way she could know about that was if he'd told her or if she'd broken his mind and torn out the secrets within. Without knowing what type of being Queen Mab was, he really had no way of know which.

Honestly, he was seriously worried about the latter, because he was having a harder time imagining the former. He supposed it was possible that he trusted this Mab that much, but he sincerely doubted that'd he could trust anyone that much.

Even Ginny didn't know about the secrets of the Department of Mysteries.

But even if he wasn't sure how she'd learnt about that, he was absolutely sure that she must have learnt it from him, in some way or another. The possibilities of how she might have acquired that information simultaneously confused and frightened him, but there was no doubt about where she'd gotten it.

Maybe that was the point; to prove that he was involved with her in some way beyond the shadow of a doubt, or maybe to get his attention.

Either way, it had worked. Even if it could well be a trap, he was suddenly very, very interested in Mab.

Lowering his hand once he was sure he was in control of himself, he gave Lea a polite smile and bow.

"Thank you very much, my dear lady, for being kind enough to bring this message to me so quickly. Please inform your Queen that I would be delighted to accept her invitation." He said. "However, I have obligations to fulfill at the moment…"

He shifted Elaine's sleeping body for emphasis.

"…And I cannot help but notice that the date of the party has not been given, nor the location."

"'Seek out Queen Mab at the next stop along your track and the party will be underway when you arrive.'" Lea said. "That was the second message Queen Mab gave unto me—and the second which you gave unto her."

Harry twitched.

"Of course I did," He murmured. "You'd think that since I knew how this was going go in advance, I'd also know when to stop."

He sighed, then, realizing he couldn't blame himself; he'd have to send the same message to avoid a paradox.

"Thank you again for your kindness, my lady," He said, forcing another smile. "I shall make sure to attend the party, but for now I must go."

Lea turned her head slightly, looking off into the distance far behind him.

"Indeed you must," She murmured. "Make haste, Harry Potter. My Lady hid you as best she could with this storm, but your arrival will not go unnoticed for long and Titania has not forgiven you. Go."

**XxXXxX**

Harry wasn't sure who Titania was. He didn't know why she had a grudge against him or how dangerous she was.

He did, however, have a long-held policy to not wait around for people that wanted to kill him. At least, not ones he knew nothing about, had no knowledge of whatsoever, and who may well outnumber him.

There was a time and a place to stand up and fight. But it wasn't when there was no need to and you weren't sure about your odds.

Instead, he chose to apparate back to the portal with Elaine, step through, and not look back.

"Elaine!" The boy said, rising to his feet with a strangled voice, his voice as relieved as if he had awoken from a nightmare and would it was just a dream. He rushed quickly to his side. "Is she okay?"

"She's just sleeping," Harry assured him, kneeling to set her down. "Can you close that portal? Supposedly, I have someone following me; if at all possible, I'd rather it not be there when they catch up to me."

"Where's Mom," Dresden said instead, looking around like he expected her to pop up at any moment…which, Harry supposed, she had last time.

He sighed, reaching into his pocket to touch his stone yet again and summon her back into his presence, startling the boy.

"The portal, please?" He repeated.

The boy hesitantly nodded, pulling himself away from Elaine's side and lifting his hands into the air. For a few moments, nothing happened, but then the opening began to slowly close. Harry nodded in approval as he stood.

"Good," He said. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have to make sure the Universe isn't going to collapse on us or something. I'll be back in…five minutes, I guess."

"Um," The younger Harry said, swallowing. "O…kay?"

Quickly making sure his flame-freezing charm was still working, Harry apparated to the other side of the train.

—And immediately had to catch himself in midair as there was no floor beneath him. Unlike the other side of the house, which seemed completely untouched by the fire, this side had been engulfed by an inferno. The House seemed ready to fall apart, except in the places where it had already done so, and was bathed in flames.

Now that he thought about it…He hadn't worried about it much since there'd been no signs of it on the other side, but the fire really should have spread there by now. Or, at the very least, the smoke should have.

Frowning, he willed himself forward through the air, towards the train. About a meter from its side, the fire and the smoke came to a halt, and the floor stood untouched. Even if it should have been collapsing, it supported his weight without a problem when he hesitantly stepped upon it.

He pondered it for a moment before shrugging and stepping fully onto it. This wasn't anywhere near the weirdest thing he'd seen today. Or in the past ten minutes, really.

Moving towards the entrance of the train, he knocked twice, firmly, and it opened immediately.

"Ah," His still monstrous looking companion said immediately. "There you are, sir. I'd wondered where you'd gotten to."

"There was a bit of business I had to take care of," Harry replied, shrugging. "And I'm afraid it seems there's quite a bit more. It appears I've caused a lot of trouble and now I'm going to have to clean up after myself, but I'm going to need your help with that."

His companion licked his mandibles considering.

"I'm not sure what you mean, sir." It said. "But it's the purpose of this train to take you where you need to go."

Harry bowed his head in thanks.

"It seems I've been to this universe in the past, chronologically," He said. "And done quite a bit, though I'm not certain of the specifics. I'm fairly sure that means I'm going to have to travel back in time to make sure things happen as they were supposed to. Can you take me there?"

It made a humming sound as several of its eyes removed themselves from their sockets and crawled across his face on twisted, misshapen legs. They looked at him and then at each other, before putting themselves into different sockets as their owner open his mouth, done thinking.

"This train can get just about anywhere, sir," It said. "If it needs to. However…that's only if we know where we're going. Existence is a very big place, sir; if you don't know exactly where you're trying to get to, it's effectively impossible to get there. We'd be lucky if we just ended up somewhere far from where we wanted to be and not in, well…you don't want to know."

Harry nodded in acceptance to that.

"It shouldn't be an issue," He said. "I know how this type of thing works. You said you received a call for the Master of Death before, did you not?"

"Yes, sir. But there was only one, if that's what you mean, sir."

Harry waved dismissively.

"Check for something besides the Master of Death; a call for some other person or thing."

"Um…what should I look for, sir?" It asked.

"It won't matter. Whatever you look for first will be the right thing."

"…Will that really work, sir? I can check to see if there are calls on other lines, but…will it really be the one we're looking for?"

"It should work, as long as we use that one. After all, at some point, we'll be going in time and setting things up so that people will contact us in that specific way. We'll just profit from our future labor right now."

"…I'm confused, sir."

Harry smiled at him.

"Time travel's like that, sometimes." He said. "Don't worry, though; while it makes no sense now, it'll be clear as day in the future. Or the past, I suppose, depending on where and when we get done."

"If you say so, sir. But…even if all that's true, and we do set things up in the past to help ourselves here in the future…how does that explain why we came here, now?"

Harry thought about that for a moment and shrugged.

"I don't know yet. Maybe we had ourselves come here to set things in motion? I figure I'll understand later." He dismissed. "All that matters is that I am here, now, and a lot of what I sincerely doubt are coincidences are coming together. I've already learnt a lot about my future actions because I just happened to be in exactly the right places at the right time…I think things were set up for this day."

"By us, sir?"

"Maybe. Or maybe we're being manipulated. We won't know until a bit further down the road, I suppose." Harry said, standing. "Anyway…I have at least one more thing to do at this point in time."

The sound of a wall being blown down echoed through the house.

"Make that at least _two_ more things to do." He said, shaking his head. "I really hope I'm behind this convoluted mess; at least that way I'll be able to get revenge by doing this to myself. I won't even have to feel bad because it'll be all my fault."

**XxXXxX**


	5. Strange Passengers

**The Master of Death**

**Strange Passengers**

**XxXXxX**

He flickered into existence in front of the children, standing protectively over them.

A neat hole had been knocked into the wall, presumably by some great force. Two new figures now stood in the house, but through the darkness outside, Harry thought he could see glimmers of silver as others moved in the firelight. For a moment, they seemed to move towards the new entrance, but the figure in the doorway held up a hand, stopping them. The other figure, who had been moving towards the children, stopped as he appeared and shifted into a ready position, a black staff clutched in one hand.

For a moment, he just looked at the two of them, sizing them up.

The one nearest to him looked short and worn, the familiar signs of aging that he saw every time he looked in the mirror. Bald but for tufts of white around the edges and with a short beard that covered the man's face and neck, he looked more like a grandfather on a farm then a threat.

Harry knew better to underestimate him because of that. Even if he didn't look dangerous, the simple truth of the world was that the scariest people never do. His aged face didn't hide the strength in his eyes or the surety with which he held himself.

The staff he held in his hand drew his attention as well. Made of dark and twisted wood, there was nothing spectacular to it visually; no markings or decorations. And yet, it drew his attention immediately, though it took him a moment to realize why.

In his years as an auror, he'd learnt how to recognize things by the feel of them. Signs of dark magic, the traces in places where it had been used to do horrible things like torture and break and harm, but especially when it had been used to kill, similar to Dumbledore. He didn't know if it was a magic ability that he'd learnt and mastered over time, if he'd just developed a sense for it do to repeated exposure to it over the decades, or if it had something to do with being the Master of Death. He'd pondered over it a number of times, but never really found an answer; in the end, it was a useful ability that helped him do his job, so he just accepted it.

Looked at that staff, he felt that again. It had taken him a moment to recognize what he was feeling, not because it was subtle or discreet, but because it was so _obvious_.

If he'd seen felt on murder weapons were dark stains, what he felt from that staff was an empty darkness so deep that it was impossible to make out anything in it or separate one part of it from the others. It was an ocean of black water that did not rage or burn at his senses, but simply _existed_, so large that it's simply presence felt as crushing as the depths of the sea.

Harry had to wonder what you had to do to taint something that much.

It put him immediately on guard and he had to forcibly restrain himself as his first instinct was to attack.

But attacking one man without even acknowledging his partner and being wary of an attack from behind was foolhardy to the point of being suicidal.

Over a hundred years ago, when he had grown as much as he ever would, Harry hadn't been a very tall young man. A hundred years later, he wasn't a very tall old man, either. His height had never been something that bothered him and after facing a Troll, a Dragon, and a number of other huge creatures, it wasn't something that he found all that intimidating, either.

Even so, when he saw that the man had him by a foot and a half, it made him pause for a moment in simple surprise. After what he'd felt from his partner's staff, Harry immediately checked him over for any sign that might suggest mass murder or horrible crimes or sins against Humanity, but there was nothing like that on the man. Besides the company he kept, Harry didn't have anything to immediately peg on the man.

He was more than a little suspicious looking, though.

He stood dressed in a completely black robe with a cowl that was a purple so dark is was almost black as well. Harry couldn't see an inch of skin on him, he was so covered. Maybe it was because of his bad experiences with black cloaked, hooded wizards or maybe he was just nervous due to the proximity of that strange staff, but Harry wasn't going to let his guard down around him either.

For a long moment, the three of them silently assessed each other. Harry tensed as the man with the staff looked past him, at the children, focusing on the boy. He moved his wand, more to draw his attention away from them than anything else.

"Is this the warlock, Rashid?" He asked, giving him a sidelong glance. "Or is he…"

"He's no warlock," The tall man said. "Leave this place, Outsider. Return from whence you came; you have no place in this world."

"…And if I refuse?"

Rashid looked at him silently for a long, quiet moment.

"Do you remember me, Outsider?" He asked, his voice low but carrying. "Do you recall how our last meeting ended? Leave this world, or I shall kill you again."

Harry took a sudden but deep breath and then slowly exhaled; the only reaction he would allow himself.

"I hope you don't think you can make me back down by threatening me with death," He said, standing firmly between them and the children. "Because as threats go, that one was pretty good, but I've heard better."

It would be a lie to say that the threat hadn't hit home or that he wasn't suddenly wary, but…he'd never been the type of man that would back down from the defense of people he felt he needed to protect just because it would put him in danger. He'd walked into the Forbidden Forest fully believing it would be the death of him.

So he brought himself under control before he even had a chance to waver, reminding himself of the most basic rule of time travel, magic, and life in general; things are not always as they seem. Just because someone thought he died, didn't necessarily mean he did; Voldemort had learnt that the hard way. And now, he had forewarning and everything. And regardless, he wasn't going to count himself out on the word of someone he didn't even know without even seeing a body.

Besides which, technically he was _already_ dead.

Exhaling slowly, he continued to think things through logically. He knew he had to travel into the past, so he almost certainly didn't die here and now. It would be easy to assume that made him invincible, but he knew from experience that there were a truly amazing amount of things you could live through. Surviving this encounter didn't exclude the possibility of being tortured, losing limbs, or _nearly_ dying, just that he would likely still be alive in the end.

Best to play things safe, then. Even if he wasn't quite ready to lie down and accept his death, it would probably be smart to act as though 'Rashid' was a potentially lethal threat until he was sure otherwise.

But these two had pretty quickly made their way into his 'enemy' category.

Rashid looked at him for a long, quiet moment before nodding.

"Very well," He said, gesturing with one hand.

Harry didn't see anything, didn't detect where the attack was coming from, didn't even realize an attack was coming his way—but his feet had left the ground and he was flying backwards through the air.

Narrowing his eyes, he apparated behind his attacker—

Or _tried_ too, at least. But as the crushing feeling of apparating came over, it was overwhelmed by a feeling of a massive weight settling over him and kept him from going anywhere.

His eyes widened in surprise as he quickly fell towards the back wall of the house.

And then the feeling passed and a silent spell halted him. Just as silently righting himself in midair, he looked back at Rashid, reassessing him even as he quickly changed tactics.

"I think you'll find that I'm well acquainted with your tricks, Outsider." Rashid said. "And that it is unwise to fight a prepared wizard."

"You know an Anti-Disapparition Jinx," Harry replied, annoyed, lifting his wand, its tip trailing with flames. "Congratulations."

Sweeping it in circular motions above his head, flames erupted in a wide circle, forcing back Rashid's companion as he tried to approach the children. Shifting the spell seamlessly from defense to offense, he quickly directed two clouds of smoke and fire towards the two wizards.

Rashid lifted a hand towards the flames and gathered them between his fingers, forming a burning ball of fire that he immediately sent back towards him. The other wizard stepped aside, gesturing to send the flames angling down towards the floor.

With a twisting motion of his wand, the two gouts of flame twisted into a pair of large Inland Taipans, which immediately bared their fangs toward his enemies—and were struck down as quickly as they'd been born, doing nothing but attracting their attention for a brief moment.

It was enough.

Harry swept his wand in a wide arc and in that instant, the air outside his circle of flames became Hydrogen.

The explosion was instantaneous. With his control over the flames he had created, he directed it outwards in a rushing torrent towards both of his enemies, removing them from his sight in a flash of blinding light.

Twitching his wand towards both of the children, he cast a Bubblehead Charm on each of them and a Flame-Freezing Charm.

"Stay here," He said, narrowed eyes still looked into the flames. The wall the two wizards had blown a hole in to enter was now completely demolished and bathed with flames on both sides.

And yet, he could still see dark shapes moving beyond the flames.

Suddenly, a path opened through the flames, revealing the same two figures, merely a bit singed.

Snorting, Harry moved forward down the path. As he walked, he swept his wand in arcs, and more shapes came into being within the parted flames. Sparks from the fire became hives of Africanized Bees, Japanese Hornets, and Malaria Mosquitoes. Large gouts of fire twisted into crocodiles, buffalo, hippos, and bears as he moved between the parted walls of flame, while smaller flames, burning like candles twisted into the shape of poison dart frogs and scorpions.

They stood for a moment, watching, before vanishing from his vision, travelling around the house at his order. They would attack the others he had seen from inside the house and, if not kill them, at least keep them busy.

He could make more as needed, so it didn't matter.

And yet…he was nervous. Because through it all, the two wizards had simply stood, calm and collected and completely unconcerned as he transfigured legions of deadly beasts.

"I'll admit," Harry said, stepping of the house. He could already hear the sounds of startled surprise and battle as his transfigured animals attacked. "I'm impressed. You claim to have fought me once and you were willing to do so again; it's been a long, long time since anyone has done that. At the very least, I'd figured you'd be getting worried by now, but…maybe I should be the one getting worried?"

He sent the tall wizard a smile to accompany his words, which wasn't returned. Or maybe it was; he still couldn't see the man's face.

"Still, while it may be arrogant to say this, but it does seem like I have the advantage, at the moment."

"Hm…?" Rashid murmured. "I wonder if that's really true?"

The man made a gesture with his hand and the temperature dropped. The flames, inside and outside the house, died in an instant. More than that, frost began to gather and spread from where the flames had died, growing by the moment as the heat continued to disappear.

No; not disappear.

It was being gathered. Rashid was gathering all the heat into his hand.

Harry raised his wand, ready to turn all the air around him into Hydrogen, but Rashid just held it there in his hand. His smaller partner, the man with the staff, glanced around as Harry sent a few of his transfigured creatures towards them as a test.

The man snorted and swept his staff—and with a feeling of suction, he tore the life out of every creature in the area. The just dropped dead, without a twitch or a spasm, falling to the ground with their life torn out. That energy was gathered as well, into the man's staff, quietly contained.

With the fires and the creatures dead, Harry could see the things they'd been fighting. For a moment, harry thought they were just 'normal' wizards with silver cloaks, if from a variety of races and nationalities, but then he noticed.

Holes through their heads, deep cuts, slit and torn throats, horrible burns and lacerations and wounds of all kind—there was no way any of them could be alive.

Around Justin's house, a cadre of dead wizards stood.

And every one of them was staring at him.

Rashid gestured towards the ground, burning a circle of fire into the ground, but before Harry could even react, he drew it back, leaving a strange, complex circle branded into the ground.

"I'll give you another chance, Outsider." Rashid said. "Leave this place. Leave the children. Get onboard your train and go far, far away. Or else you will regret ever coming to this world."

Harry watched them silently for a moment.

That was…a lot of power they'd just gathered. Enough to kill a man. Or a lot of men. If he got hit by that, it would probably be enough to kill him several times over.

Even so, he shook his head.

"I'm not afraid of dying," He said. "And even if I were, it's not my turn to die yet. And while that was quite impressive, I have a few tricks of my own."

"Indeed. What is death to one such as you?" Rashid sighed tiredly. "But it is not death I speak of. You have made enemies, Outsider. Many, many enemies. One in particular hates you a great deal. Titania is not usually one to interfere in the affairs of mortals, but I believe she would make an exception for you, Robin Goodfellow. And I do not think she will kill you. In fact, I rather think you shall live for a very, very long time. I need but open the gate and she will know you're here."

Harry pursed his lips.

"Is that what you intend to do? Hide while someone else fights your battles for you?"

It sounded juvenile even to him, but the time continuum wouldn't keep him from being tortured for days without end—and that was the type of thing he'd rather not experience. He didn't know who Titania was or how powerful she was, so perhaps she was overhyped; he'd rather not find out, if at all possible.

Rashid shrugged.

"I feel confident that I could beat you again, even if I was alone," He said, as if it was a simple fact. "But I'm at that age where I feel no actual need to prove it."

Harry was caught between grimacing and smiling at that.

"Touche," He replied. "Then open the gate and come what may. I still have a reason to stay, so I'm not leaving."

Rashid nodded.

"So be it," He said. The power from the fire and the deaths gathered between the two wizard's hands and Harry could all but feel the world groaning beneath its weight.

And then a voice interrupted them.

"Father?" Margaret asked.

Harry raised an eyebrow as she appeared again.

"What's this?" He asked. "And also, where have _you_ been?"

She ignored him completely, just staring at the smaller of the two men. For a moment, he stared back, his face going suddenly pale before flushing red with anger.

"You _dare_—" He snarled, lifting his staff towards Margaret.

Rashid placed a gloved hand firmly on his shoulder before he could do anything.

"Stop Ebenerzer," He said, his voice commanding. "She's not what you think."

Rashid's hood turned enough that Harry thought he was being glared at.

"He is the Master of Death." He continued. "This is well within his power. I have seen him do such things before; he raises the dead as easily as he slays the living."

Ebenezer seemed to tremble then, beneath Rashid's hand.

"Then she's…" He whispered, breathless.

"Yes," Rashid said, releasing him. "It is one of the reasons he has been summoned so often. For every person that wishes for a warrior to kill their enemies, there are many more that simply wish to reunite with their loved ones. It is only the obscurity of the rituals that bring him into this world that keep him from appearing constantly."

"Then…" Ebenezer gave his tall friend a sidelong glance. "Couldn't we just publish his ritual—"

"That won't work with him." Rashid cut him off. "His rituals do only one thing—they invite him into this world. And he addresses all such summons personally, one by one, fulfills his summoner's requests, and then leaves."

Harry stared at Rashid flatly.

"And is that wrong?" He asked. "If I reunite people with the ones they love for just a short time, so that they can say goodbye? Is that what you're accusing me of, Rashid? If so, then be aware that I feel no guilt whatsoever, nor do I feel I've done anything wrong."

"The Council thinks only in Black and White," Margaret all but spat. "There is no room for grey of any kind in their eyes. The Laws of Magic that they hold to so tightly have nothing to do with right and wrong. Nothing to do with Justice."

Rather than get angry or deny it, Rashid nodded.

"Indeed." He agreed. "That was never what the Laws were about. They were about limiting power—and about limiting how much harm wizards cause to others and too themselves. To restrict how much they can abuse it and to keep them from being twisted by their own power. Is what you do wrong, Outsider? Is it wrong to reunite Children with their Parents and Husbands with their Wives? Not in and of itself. But there is a reason the Seventh Law is what it is. This is not your world, Outsider, and you do not belong here. It breaks under the weight of you and tears because of your presence. Cracks spread through the Outer Gates whenever you enter and exit this world. Whether you are evil or not does not change that."

"And so I have to die, even if I haven't hurt anyone or done anything wrong?" Harry questioned. "Because I exist?"

"I do not claim to be perfect," Rashid said, in that same, calm tone. "I do not even claim to be just. But what I do—what the Council does—keeps people from getting hurt. It helps save lives and minds and even souls. And in the process, we can sometimes do some good in the world. I can be content with that."

For a moment, Harry was silent.

"I can understand that." He said finally. "I can even agree with that, in some ways. But not in all of them. If I see a chance to do some good, then I'll do it, because that's who I am. I cannot change that—or rather, I do not want to."

Rashid nodded, nothing about him changing.

"I know," He said. "And I respect that. It is not many that I offer a chance to go in peace; I hold no grudge against you, Outsider. But I am who I am and this is what I must do."

"Then nothing has changed," Harry replied, rolling his wand silently between his fingers in a half forgotten nervous gesture. "But I do have one question. May I ask it?"

Rashid inclined his head.

"Behind me, in that house, are two children." Harry said. "One, a boy, is named Harry Dresden."

He looked towards Ebenezer.

"If Margaret is your Daughter, then he is your grandson. He took part in summoning me, because a wizard named Justin DuMorne bound his mind and forced him to do so. I killed DuMorne and freed him—but he broke your Laws, nonetheless. If your Council is not about Good and Evil, or even Justice…then where do those children fall under your Laws?"

Ebenezer nearly dropped his staff. His control on the energy he'd gathered broke and expanded immediately, kept in check only by the boundary of the circle.

"What?" He demanded, his voice breathless and his face pale.

"Why do you think I summoned Margaret?" Harry asked. "I did it for the boy. For your grandson. So I have to ask, what do you intend to do to him now?"

"I-I…" Ebenezer turned his wide eyes towards Margaret. "I-is he…?"

"He's my son," She confirmed, nodded firmly. "You must have known he existed, even if you didn't know where he was."

The old man looked down and nodded, not facing his daughter.

"He was enthralled?" He asked.

"Yes," Harry confirmed. "He and the girl. I removed the compulsion from his mind and was about to do the same to girl's before you arrived."

With his head bowed as it was, Harry could not see what expression was on Ebenezer's face, if any.

"Will he—" The man cut himself off, drawing a deep breath. "Will _they_ be okay?"

Harry shrugged.

"I removed the disease," He said. "But there was only so much I could do about the symptoms on short notice. But I did what I could. Your grandson was hurt more badly then the girl had been, but with time—and baring any further damage—I think he'll be okay eventually. I can't say when, though, because—"

"Because ever mind is different," Ebenezer said, quietly. "I know."

Rashid shifted next to him, in what Harry assumed was a shrug.

"The Council will want an investigation, I'm sure," He said. "Because saying someone forced you to do it has been a common excuse for a long, long time. But if they were really enthralled then it's a simple enough matter to prove it. If what you say is true then it won't be an issue. Beyond that, I think the only reason for the Council to get involved is because two under aged Apprentices with severe mental damage are now homeless and will both need a parental figure of some kind to make sure they recover properly and to finish their education."

He glanced past Harry, towards Justin's burning house.

"Or to redo it completely, as the case may be."

"I'll do it," Ebenezer said immediately, surprising no one.

Harry glanced toward Margaret.

"Is that okay?" He asked.

For a moment, she looked pained, making Harry wonder about her relationship with her father, but then she nodded once.

"With Malcolm dead…there is no one else I can trust to keep him safe besides him."

"Are you sure?" Harry murmured. "That staff of his reeks of murder, among other things."

Ebenezer winced and looked away as Margaret gave him a smile that held no happiness.

"He's killed more people then I can count," She said. "And that his position exists at all makes the Council hypocritical. But he does what he does to protect the world and the Council—I can at least acknowledge that. And given the people who may come after my son, he's the best person to keep him safe."

Harry looked at her for a moment and shrugged. That staff made him nervous and it felt disgusting—but then, his hands were far from clean, too. But if what she said was true, then she had a point. The children probably wouldn't be safe anywhere without someone powerful protecting them.

And besides, she was the boy's mother and he the boy's grandfather. It was kind of their choice, even if it did make him a bit unhappy.

But…

"And what about the girl?" He asked. "As far as I know, she has no living family of any kind and she'd been sent to in an orphanage before Justin found her. I could bring up her parents to ask them if she has anyone else, but she'll need protection too, I imagine. Who will protect her?"

Ebenezer glanced at him, before looking at the house, as if he might see the girl by doing so.

"Who is she?" He asked.

"Her name is Elaine." Harry said. "She's your grandson's lover."

The man twitched and shuffled his feet.

"If she has no one else…"

Harry nodded again.

"Very well," He said, lowering his wand. "If the children's safety can be guaranteed, then I have no reason to stay. If you can promise that, I shall go—after I heal the girl, of course."

Ebenezer was silent for a moment, and Harry was slightly annoyed to realize he was suspicious of a trap. The old man glanced at Rashid, who nodded without taking his eyes off of Margaret.

"Okay," Ebenezer said, finally. "Deal."

He made to step over the circle, but Rashid spoke up, stopping her.

"Margaret Dresden," He murmured. "Who exactly are you worried will get your son?"

Her face twisted, as if she weren't sure whether to smile, frown, or grimace and had decided to attempt all three.

"You already know that, don't you, Gatekeeper?" She asked. "The same ones that seek the destruction of your Council. They call themselves the Circle."

"And they are the one's who hunted you down, were they not?" Rashid asked, receiving a nodded. "Interesting…by any chance, is there anything you'd be willing to share about your former associates."

A wicked light blazed in Margaret's eyes.

"A few things, I suppose," She said, in a faux bored voice.

**XxXXxX**

Harry looked quietly out the window of the train, face pensive. Outside, Rashid and Ebenezer watched him quietly, waiting for him to leave.

They weren't what troubled him. They just wanted to make sure he was gone before calling their Council, hoping to avoid trouble. He'd healed the girl and was confident she would recover completely, in time, so that wasn't the problem either.

Instead, he was concerned about what Rashid had said.

'_This is not your world, Outsider, and you do not belong here. It breaks under the weight of you and tears because of your presence. Cracks spread through the Outer Gates whenever you enter and exit this world. Whether you are evil or not does not change that.'_

There was no proof to support what Rashid said. No cracks had appeared in midair, nor had strange and horrifying things like rains of blood and biblical plagues started happening—nothing he would have associated with something being horribly wrong with the world. Really, he had no reason to take Rashid on his word alone.

Hell, the man had claimed to have killed him before and was willing to do so again. That wasn't the type of person he usually listened to.

And yet, what reason did Rashid have to lie? He really hadn't seemed to hate him or anything, though it was hard to tell with that hood covering his face. And it was possible he was just really good at hiding his emotions. Harry couldn't say for sure whether the man had reason to hate him without knowing what had happened in the past, though.

But then, what about Ebenezer? He might have gone along with it just because Rashid had asked him to—and there was still that vile murder weapon he carried around—but Margaret had seemed to trust him. She'd said he did everything he did for the sake of the Council and the world; since she knew the man far better than he did, Harry had no choice but to take her word for it.

But in the end, even if he had no reason whatsoever to trust them, he'd still have to consider what they'd said; because what if they were _right_?

"Is something wrong, sir?" His companion asked.

Harry continued to stare out the window for a moment before straightening.

"That man—that tall one out there—he said something that worries me." Harry said. "But now that I think of it, maybe you know the answer."

"If I know, then I would be happy to tell you, sir," It said. "What troubles you?"

"He called me an Outsider and he said that by existing in this world, I damaged it. And he said that when we entered this world through the 'Outer Gates,' we widened the cracks in it. I don't know for sure what that means or what that would do, but…is he telling the truth?"

It tilted its head in a gesture Harry presumed to be confusion.

"I'm…not sure what that means, sir. I will say that I have travelled to many, many worlds and have never seen such a thing happen, but for all the worlds I've been to, there are countless more that I haven't, and I would not presume to know how every world works. This world is strange, in and of itself, because it restricts entrance and exit so fiercely."

Harry pursed his lips, glancing to the floor.

"Assuming for a moment that what he says is true," He said. "What would that mean?"

"…If were really are widening the cracks in this world every time we enter, like water running through them," It said, slowly, as if pondering the words even as it spoke. "And if these Outer Gates are what I think they are…then, indeed, our presence here would be a bad thing. If so, then that would also explain why entering this world is so much more difficult than most."

"If we leave cracks every time we enter or exit this world, what would happen if we left enough cracks and the gates fell?" Harry pressed.

At that, his companion became quiet for a long moment.

"If they fell…if the boundaries between Shape, Location, Communication, Identity, and all those things were to break apart…I can't even imagine, sir. At the very least, this Universe wouldn't be anything like it is now, if it was able to continue existing at all."

"Yes," Harry sighed. "That was what I figured."

"But, um, sir…if that's true, then we should leave as soon as possible," It said. "I can inform my superiors and we can quarantine travel to this world, as well as see if it can be fixed."

"Oh, by all means, you should inform your superiors," Harry said. "And anyone else that might be able to help. But I'm afraid it's not as simple as that. Remember, we've already been to the past in this Universe. If we appeared in the past, but never went to the past—that is, if we leave this Universe right now and never return—then that would create a paradox, wouldn't it?"

"Ah!" His companion said. "Yes, sir, I suppose it would. How bad would that be, sir?"

"Bad," Harry said, seriously.

"Worse then causing damage to the Universe?"

Harry shrugged, unsure.

"Generally, people avoid trying to find out, but there are theories. And while it's obviously unproven, one of them is that it could destroy the Universe."

"If we try to preserve Time, then we crack the world, but if we preserve the world we crack time? Is that how it is, sir?" It asked.

Harry nodded grimly.

"What about what you said earlier, sir? About how everything will work out, because it _has_ worked out, temporally? What if we just leave; is it possible that everything will work out anyway? Maybe someone else did it and they just thought it was you?"

"That might have worked," Harry said. "If Lea hadn't called me Harry Potter and if Mab hadn't given me this letter. It might have been feasible for some who looked like me to have done everything, but someone with the same name, the same title, the same knowledge, _and_ the same face? That's pushing it, somewhat."

It sighed.

"If that's true, then why—" It paused, trying to figure things out. "Why did future you travel to the past back when what was happening now was his present?"

It said that words with the helpless, confused shrug, but Harry understood anyway.

"Back when the future me was sitting right here, having this conversation? Well, naturally, he'd learnt he'd gone back in time, spoken to Lea, and received a letter from Mab, just like I did. As did his future self and his future self's future self."

"But someone must have done it before anyone else," It protested. "The first person to travel back, before all the one's after him."

Harry shrugged.

"I don't know. Maybe time itself did this. Or some being out there that hates us. Or perhaps that version of myself was just a prick. But I really have no idea."

"I'll just—I'll just try to explain the situation to my superiors," It said. "Are we going back in time, then?"

"I suppose," Harry said, tiredly. "Since the Universe still exists, it's obvious that the damage we did today and in the past didn't destroy it. Creating an unknown number of paradoxes, on the other hand, might. Hopefully, we don't have too much work cut out for us."

His companion silently handed him a paper.

Harry looked at it silently.

"One day, I'm going to catch up to myself," He said. "_And I'm going to regret I was ever born!_"

"Like we do now, sir?"

"Yes," Harry said. "Exactly like this. In fact, this is probably what I'm going to do to myself."


	6. Interlude One: Storm Delay Part I

**The Master of Death**

**First Interlude: Storm Delay**

**Part I**

The young man he'd just stopped looked up at him, his eyes wide, dilated, and bloodshot. He gave a maniac's grin, his mouth stretching painfully wide, displaying both his teeth and gum.

"Wizard!" He cried, a cop holding either arm. "I can see you! I see you, Wizard! I know who let you go and I know who waits! No one can flee from death, wizard—everyone has to take a ride on that train, and it's never gonna bring you back! Can't you hear!? Listen, listen, listen, _listen_! He's coming, he's coming, he's coming, he's always coming! Here and there, then and now, he comes!"

Harry felt like someone had replaced his blood with ice water as the young man's expression shifted with pained terror, staring at something only he could see.

"He's riding his iron horse! Is he going to be here tonight? I-is it for me!?" The junkie stared struggling in the arms of the cops, his feet scraping uselessly against the floor as he tried to escape. "N-no! It's not my time, I swear! I don't know who you're here for Master, but it's not me! It's someone else! P-please, you have to believe me!"

"Jesus Christ on a crutch!" One of the officers, a short, round man, said as the young man tried to struggle. There were two of them and the boy was neither healthy nor in his right mind, so they controlled him easily, but it didn't keep the young man from trying.

The boy's eyes focused on him again, but Harry was careful to avoid making eye contact.

Something told him this was a soul he didn't want to see.

"Wizard!" The junkie's voice had gone from insane, to fearful, to pleading in mere seconds and he looked like it was only the hold the police had on him that kept him from throwing himself at Harry's feet. "He let you go! Why did he let you go, wizard!? Please, you have to help me! I don't wanna die, I don't wanna die, I don't wanna—"

And all of a sudden, the fight went out of him and he sagged in the cops arms, murmuring frantically under his breath.

Sighing in relief, the shorter cop relaxed a bit.

"Junkies," He said, shaking his head. "Thanks for the assist, buddy."

Harry stared at the junkie for a long, stunned moment, not reacting until the cops began to drag the junkie down the hallway. He managed to catch the sleeve of the taller officer.

"What's going on, sir?" He asked.

"Another junkie," The man said. "One of those ThreeEye punks that have been popping up lately. Caught the kid with nearly four grams of the stuff—more, if you count what's in him. You okay?"

"Fine," Harry assured him. "ThreeEye? That drug that's been all over the news lately?"

"Supposed to make them see the spirit world, if you can believe it," The officer said, shaking his head in disbelief. "The stuff hooks harder then crack, too. Thanks again for the help."

This close, he could hear the junkie's mumbling.

"Someone's gonna die tonight, someone's gonna die, someone's gonna die," He repeated again and again.

"No problem," Harry said, before quickly returning to his seat, getting out of their way.

He'd never seen that junkie before. Never even been near him, as far as he was aware. And even if he had been, that kid had been no practitioner.

So how the hell had he seen the shadow of the Master of Death?

Ever since that night when Justin's ritual had gone awry, he'd been marked, just by being near the Master of Death and surviving. Those who knew how could still see his shadow, trailing on the ground behind him—at least, until it got tired of doing that and decided to fly, crawl, slither, or walk behind him instead. Sort of a psychic scar to remind him of the encounter.

But only wizards had the kind of vision needed to do that. And that junkie had been no wizard.

Was it possible he'd been too dismissive of the drug? Could it really grant the ones that took it the Sight?

He shuddered at the thought.

The type of things one could see with the Sight could be beautiful, the type of things that could give you hope in the darkest night—or they could be horrible beyond words. It showed you the truth in all its ways, but the truth had a tendency to hurt. It also had a tendency to be liberating, but with the Sight, sometimes what it liberated you of was your sanity.

And whatever you saw with the Sight, you'd never be able to forget. For a bunch of normal people with no idea how to control it…they'd go mad in weeks—if they were lucky enough not to stumble across a monster of some sort and draw enough attention to be eaten, at least.

If ThreeEye could do that…it was a lot more dangerous than anyone realized.

And, perhaps worse than that, while what you See is always open to interpretation and metaphor, in the end, what you see with the Sight is always true, as well.

'Someone's gonna die tonight.'

Maybe that junkie had just been reminded that everything had to die sometime. Maybe he meant it in the broad 'a hundred people die a minute' sense.

Yeah, and maybe he'd grow wings and fly.

Hell's Bells. This day was just getting better and better.

**XxXXxX**

"Dresden," Murphy said. "Wake up."

Blinking himself back to consciousness, Harry shook his head.

"Wasn't asleep," He lied, stifling a yawn and mentally kicking himself. It wasn't like him to fall asleep on the job like this; even if the nightmares that Justin's enthrallment had caused him had long since faded, he still didn't like falling asleep where people could see him. It was more habit now than anything else, but the conversation's he'd had with his grandfather had been awkward and if he had a sudden relapse here in the police station, it would be flat-out embarrassing.

Murphy snorted disbelievingly.

"Save it, Harry," She said, pushing a cup of coffee into his hands.

"You are an angel," Harry said, taking it. It was a little stale, but it was full of sugar, just the way he liked it, and after the long nights he'd had to go through lately, anything with caffeine in it was heavenly. He nodded down the hallway after taking a deep sip of it. "You'll want to hear this one in your office."

Frowning at him, she nodded.

"Alright," She said. "Let's go."

A minute later, he sat down in her office, after she'd turned off her computer and radio and unplugged them both.

"Alright, Harry, what have you got for me?"

"Elaine and I were up all night working on it," He said, putting the coffee cup down on her desk after taking one last sip. "And we had a hell of a time figuring it out. As near as we can tell, it'd be damn hard to do it to one person, let alone two."

"And yet, I have two corpses on my hands," She said bluntly.

"Hold your horses; I'm just getting started. Look, whoever did this did it with Thaumaturgy; that much, we're sure off. They had some of the victim's hair, fingernails, or whatever and used it to make a link. Then they ripped out a symbolic heart from some doll or animal and used a _huge_ amount of energy to make the same thing happen to their victims. But the amount of energy you'd need to do something like this is _staggering_. It would be easier to make a small earthquake or set the building on fire then affect a living being like that. I _might_ be able to do it without killing myself. To one person. Who had really, really pissed me off."

"And the Council would kill if you did," She nodded. "You said you called them, right? And they'd be sending a 'Warden' or something by, soon?"

Harry nodded.

"Not sure when they'll get here, though." He said. "Travel through the Nevernever is iffy like that. It might take them a little while to get in contact with someone who knows a quick and safe way to Chicago, too; not everyone knows the same Ways. But worst case scenario is it takes them a day to get here, after which they'll start investigating. Hopefully we'll have some answers to give him by then."

Murphy looked a bit displeased at the notion of what she viewed as another cop potentially muscling her aside on her own case, but if it saved lives, Harry knew he probably wouldn't hear anything about it.

"What else can you tell me?" She asked instead. "So far all we've got is that he's some kind of magical muscle man. If that's all you have to give him, you're going to be the biggest suspect."

Harry snorted.

"I said I could maybe kill one, remember? Two would be the death of me."

"But you also have Elaine," She pointed out. "Think about how that would look to some cop that walked onto the case. The only known wizards in town, known to work together. Someone who didn't know you might get suspicious."

Harry shifted uncomfortably.

"Maybe," He said. "But we were also the ones who called them in. Would a killer do that?"

"You'd be surprised; I've seen more elaborate cover-ups. Some guy who may be four or five times my age has probably seen a lot more." She said. "So what else do you have?"

"There are several possibilities," Harry said, trying to shake off the nervousness Murphy's words had inspired. "And yeah, some kind of super wizard is one of them. But you're more likely to find someone who's just really good. Raw power isn't everything; focus matters, too. The better your focus is, the better you are at putting all your power in one place, and the more you can do with it. Sort of like with some tiny Chinese martial arts master who can shatter bricks and tree trunks with his bare hands; he couldn't lift a puppy over his head, but what little power he does have, he can focus to do incredible things."

Murphy glanced towards her Aikido trophies and nodded.

"Okay; I can understand that. So we're looking for Mister Miyagi instead of some Arnold Schwarzenegger?"

"Again, possibly, but I don't think so. You'd have to be _good_ to do something like that; the type of amazing that attracts attention. Even if it's possible, I'd be surprised if someone like that suddenly appeared to kill two random people. If they were going to put their neck on the line with the White Council, you'd figure they'd do it for more than they did. As it is, whoever was responsible for this mess managed to piss of Bianca, Marcone, the police, _and_ the White Council, all at once, for no apparent gain."

"Alright," Murphy said, getting impatient. "Then who did it?"

"It could be more than one wizard. Several, pooling their power together and using it all at once. But I don't think that's it, either. It's a bitch for most people to do, because everyone involved has to be committed to the spell and have no doubts or reservations, and trust each other implicitly. Elaine and I can do it, but it's hard enough that we usually don't even bother unless it's a special occasion; you probably won't find that kind of thing in your average gang of killers. I was stumped, but Elaine had an idea and I think she's right."

"I know you like keeping secrets and hearing yourself talk, Harry," Murphy said, nearly growling. "But could you just tell me already?"

"The storms." Harry said. "I hadn't really noticed, but you know how Elaine is good with lightning? She said that someone could use the storms to power their spells. There's a lot of power involved with that type of thing, even if it's dangerous to use."

"Which means," Murphy said, a gleam in her eyes. "The storms have to be in his area when he casts the spells, right? Does he cast them as soon as they're overhead?"

"Yes and I don't know, in that order," He told her. "But it's a good place to start—and he probably does cast it as soon as possible. This guy hasn't shown a huge amount of foresight, given how many people he's pissed off, so keeping track of the storms is a good place to start. And another thing; that new drug ThreeEye? I met some guy who was high on it when several officers brought him in. Something he said made me think it's the real deal."

"So if we find whoever's supplying it, we'll find the killer?" Murphy said, catching on. She pondered that. "If we got a sample of the drug, could you use it to track him down?"

"If it's some kind of potion like I think it is, then maybe, yeah. Whoever made it would have had to use his magic to make it work. I might be able to track him down with it. The fresher the sample, the better, though. But even if I had a really good sample, I'd rather wait for some Warden backup before hunting down the guy, if at all possible."

"It might not be," She said, shaking her head. "If the weatherman is accurate, the next storm rolls in tonight. If you're right, another murder will probably happen tonight."

Harry felt his eye twitch.

"It never rains but it pours, huh?" He complained. "Then I'll try to—"

"Harry," She said. "If someone might die and I know it's going to happen, then I can't just stand by and do nothing. And I can't wait a day for someone else to show up. I'm going to try to find this guy and take him down."

Harry looked at her quietly for a long moment.

"Karrin," He said. "This isn't going to be like some vampire or troll. This is going to be really dangerous, especially if that storm arrives. If anything goes wrong, people could die."

"I know," She said, her face serious. "I've seen what you and Elaine can do. But people _will_ die if I do nothing and I can't let that happen just because it would put me in danger. I don't need a lecture on how I might die—I already know. But I could use some magical backup, if it's available."

Harry worked his jaw for a moment, looking at the ground. If it was just him involved, he'd have said yes without hesitation, but if he got involved, then Elaine would, too.

But even so, Ebenezer McCoy hadn't raised kids that would walk away while innocent people got hurt.

"Can you round up SI and get a sample of that stuff before the storm hits?" He asked.

"I'll have to check the weather, but I think so." She said. "Does that mean you're in?"

He blew out a breath.

"Let me call Elaine," He said. "But yeah. I'm in."

**XxXXxX**

The trail led them to a nice house down by Lake Michigan. It wasn't the biggest house, but it wasn't small by any stretch of the imagination, either. He and Elaine had led the way in their car with the forces of SI following close behind.

It wasn't easy to move that many cars without getting noticed, but they did their best, and when they rolled up just out of easy view of the house, they at least weren't shot at immediately.

"Everyone ready?" Harry asked, glancing at them.

He'd done his best to protect them against anything that might be in there, but with only an hour of preparation, there was a limit to how much he could do. He'd settled for covering the basics. He'd asked all of them to bring crosses or whatever type of religious symbol they preferred, had passed out his entire store of holy water into the bottles Murphy had supplied, and had asked them to bring salt and something they could prick their fingers on, if needed.

The officers of SI had various beliefs about how much of a phony he was and how many of the things they saw from day to day were real or not, but they'd all learnt to listen to him and Elaine. They knew how to make a basic circle if they needed too and more than a few of them had been in situations where they were the only things that had kept them alive until backup had arrived. They knew the basic weaknesses of all the usual creatures that went bump in the night, how water affected magic, and the basic list of what not to do concerning magic users. You wouldn't find any hair in one of their combs, much less hear them say their full names, either.

It would have to be enough, because it was all he could do. He could tell them what was in the dark and how to fight it.

And he could stand here with them to try and keep them alive.

"Christ, Dresden," Carmichael said, carefully placing a shotgun on the hood of his car. "What are we about to do? You didn't make us come this armed for those vampires last summer. When I heard the list of what you wanted me to bring, I just brought my garlic again, too."

"Probably won't be needed," Harry said. "But it couldn't hurt, either."

Carmichael took out a case that held his shotgun ammo. Despite what a lot of people might think at a glance, the guy was sharp and it showed in how he did small things like order his ammo. He reached in for several shells that contained rock salt, lined in neat rows that Harry knew from personal experience he had memorized to the extent that he could pick them out and load them skillfully even will blinded from blood running into his eyes and in possession of a mild concussion.

"Might want to get some real rounds, too," He told him absently.

"Hello, Ron," Elaine said, smiling slightly as she and Murphy approached. "I checked the house with my Sight, Harry. No wards, as far as I can tell. If this guy really is running his business out of here, there won't even be a threshold."

"Huzzah," Harry said flatly, but he was more relieved than he thought. If there really wasn't a threshold, then his magic would be a lot more useful. "Anything else?"

"It's sick, Harry," She said seriously. "The entire house is stained with black magic. It's disgusting to even look at."

"We expected that," He reminded her. "Multiple killings, addictive, horrific drugs, and who knows what else."

She nodded.

"Did you go over the plan?" Murphy asked, to which he shook his head. She glanced at the assembled officers and nodded too herself before speaking. "The plan's pretty simple. We go in and take them by surprise. If there's anyone in there with whoever's doing this, round them up and cuff them."

"Elaine and I will take the guy responsible for all of this," Harry continued for her. "Though if you see a chance to shoot the guy, feel free to do so. We'll try to disable him and serve him up to the Wardens, whenever they show up—meaning we'll try and put him to sleep with magic. Once we take him down, we'll take a few clips of hair, make sure he's not in any position to hurt anyone and bam! Done."

"Sounds simple," Carmichael said. "Now tell us about all that stuff that can go horribly wrong."

"The storm is still a ways off," Elaine said. "If it gets close enough, things could get troublesome, however. And there are all the usual things to expect when dealing with black magic. There could be demon, in which case use your Holy Water and faith to keep it away and we'll deal with it. He could even have mortal thralls."

She said the word with a nearly unnoticeable shiver.

"Depending on how desperate he was for power, he could have gotten aid from any number of things—faeries, at least, would be easy to contact." Harry said. "And, again, demons. A bunch of things from the Nevernever would be willing to trade power for some type of sacrifice or another. That's why the Council likes to take down warlocks quickly; give them enough time and even minor talents can become a hassle. Hopefully we caught this one in time to nip it in the bud."

"And if we didn't?" Carmichael asked.

"We'll just have to do our best anyway."

"Okay," Murphy said. "Everyone have everything?"

"We should have called Michael," Elaine murmured.

"He's out of town," Harry whispered back before raising his voice. "We're good."

"Then let's do this."

**XxXXxX**

A group of cops and a pair of wizards, all of whom were armed to bear, was hardly inconspicuous, but they made their way up to the warlock's house as casually as they could manage. No one called down fire or ripped out their hearts on their way up to the doorstep, so they apparently managed okay.

And then they ran into their first problem. An amazingly simple and yet potentially dangerous problem.

"So…" Carmichael began. "Are we gonna kick the door or what? That's probably gonna give us away."

Elaine hummed quietly. Her eyes went slightly out of focus as she swept her gaze up and down the door.

"No alarms, no traps, nothing. Maybe we're giving this guy too much credit. We should just blow it down, then; it'll take less time than trying to kick it open." She said. "Harry, is your ring still fully charged?"

"Hold your horses," He told her, frowning. "We don't even know if it's locked yet—and I might be able to pick it, even if it's not."

He tried the doorknob, just for the hell of it.

It turned easily and the door opened.

He blinked at it, and then at the people behind him, who were also staring.

"Something's wrong," He said. "I'm never this lucky."

"Christ, he didn't even lock his front door?" Carmichael murmured. "What kind of criminal doesn't even know to lock their door when their committing crimes?"

"A dumb one?" One of the other detectives replied, softly. No one laughed and even the speaker was frowning.

Murphy shook her head.

"He might be dumb," She said. "But he's also a drug dealer and, apparently, wealthy enough to buy a house down here. He should at least know to do this much, if only to keep from being robbed."

An older cop, Micky Malone, shifted a few paces behind Murphy, turning towards the street.

"Maybe he's expecting guests," He said, lifting his gun to point it at the street.

As one, ever cop in the back drew their weapon, turned, and went down to one knee, allowing the cops at their back to turn and point their guns safely over them. Towering over everyone as he was, Harry easily saw what they were pointing their guns at.

An expensive looking car was pulling up the driveway.

"Elaine?" He murmured.

She turned, Sight still wide open, and stared hard at the car for a moment.

"Two humans," She declared. "A man and a woman; a couple, I think. Definitely involved with this, too; they have signs of dark magic all over them. They aren't practitioners, though."

Murphy nodded at her side.

"Ron, take three and handle it." She said. Carmichael nodded his head towards three of the detectives, lifted his massive shotgun and moved quickly down the stairs. "Everyone else, with us. Let's try and get this over with quickly, before one of them gets off a warning or someone else shows up."

The first thing Harry noticed was the music, coming from a CD player on a table nearby.

He frowned down at Murphy, recognizing it.

"The same thing was playing at the Madison," She confirmed. "Where's our guy?"

He lifted a hand to halt everyone for a moment, before closing his eyes, Listening. There was the sound of movement up above him—the warlock, he assumed, preparing his ritual.

"He's upstairs," He said, opening his eyes. "I don't hear anyone down here."

Moving forward with carefully slowness, they stepped out of the hallway, into a large, spacious room that stretched up to the top of the house, through the floors above. A spiral staircase lead up to the split upper floor, which he assumed was where the Warlock was. A glance to Elaine received a nod in return, as well as a silent point towards a specific place above.

Harry looked around at the lower room once he was sure where their target was.

It was cluttered with containers. Plastic cases, cartons, cardboard boxes, and wooden crates. He gestured towards the group to stay where they were before silently moving over to the nearest one, steadfastly avoiding the CD player, he opened it before silently showing it to Murphy.

It was full of vials—at least a hundred of them, each full of liquid ThreeEye. Closing it, he opened a few of the other boxes, confirming his suspicions, and closed them as he finished.

He carefully moved until he was back with the group.

"At least we know we have the right guy," He murmured. "The Warden's will have a field day with this."

"What was in the other boxes?" Elaine asked. "The ingredients?"

Harry nodded.

"We have all the proof we need right here." He said. "So let's take this guy down."


	7. Interlude One: Storm Delay Part II

**The Master of Death**

**Interlude: Storm Delay**

**Part II**

**XxXXxX**

Harry went up first, secure that, if needed, he could use his shield bracelet to protect himself from whatever was thrown his way. Elaine wasn't really a brute force kind of girl and none of the others had anything that would stop an angry wizard's attack, if they got spotted.

Granted, he had nothing to guarantee that he could survive it, either, but he did his best to put those thoughts out of his head, though he hoped to God that the stairs didn't creak.

Crouching as he reached the top of the stairs, he paused for a moment, worried that he might be spotted, before quickly peaking his head above cover to spot their guy—only to just as quickly yank his head down, catching only a glimpse.

It was enough to make him worried.

Perhaps inevitably, the man they were after was dressed all in black. All around him were a set of scattered implements, including an alter with two candles—one black, one white. A rabbit of some sort lay prone on his alter, a sacrifice in waiting. Worse, several young men lay around the area, out of the way and unmoving. They looked to be either unconscious or drugged in some way, but he couldn't be sure, though their presence was strange.

With the storm coming and all these implements prepared, especially that sacrifice, it wasn't hard to conclude that someone was gonna die if this ritual went through.

And with no idea how far away the storm was, he had to act quickly.

He looked down the stairs at Elaine and Murphy and held up all of his fingers.

'Ten seconds,' he mouthed.

Then, he took a deep breath, spoke several words in a language he didn't know and felt the air gather beneath him, a solid force that carried him slowly into the air, his duster bellowing dramatically. The warlock stared at him as he landed on the balcony, wide eyed in shock.

"Hey," Harry said, casual as if walking up to an old friend at the grocery store. He kept his features deliberately nonchalant as he slowly stalked around the edge of the circle. "What's up?"

The warlock snarled and lifted his hand—only to suddenly hesitate, exactly as Harry had planned. With that circle there, magical energy would be kept out—but it would be kept inside, as well. If he wanted to throw any magic at him, he'd have to break the circle, first.

Of course, a real, physical object with human will behind it, like, say, a bullet, would go through it like it wasn't even there.

In the warlock's moment of hesitation, Harry made sure that he was well out of the way of anyone coming up the stairs. He lifted his staff and blasting rod as well, sending light coursing through the runes upon them with an effort of will and baring his teeth. His spells wouldn't break the circle, but if it dropped, they both knew what would happen.

"You!" The warlock spat. "I should have killed you when you first started interfering!"

Harry blinked once at that before lifting an eyebrow slowly.

"Yeah…I'm sorry, but I have no idea who you are." He stated, watching silently as the man's face twisted in anger.

"It doesn't matter!" He said, stepping towards the edge of the circle. "You can just die a fool, then!"

"Or you can get on your hands and knees," Murphy said, standing at the top of the stairs. Her gun was out and pointed steadily at her target's center of mass. "Hands where I can see 'em."

The warlock sneered.

"The police?" He said. "I could kill a dozen of them! Go ahead and shoot—this circle is all that keeps you alive!"

Harry regarded him silently for a moment.

"Have you ever heard the gun get called the great equalizer?" He asked. "If she shoots and you block the bullets, do you really think I'll just stand here and watch? I'll take you down hard. And while bullets may not be as impressive looking as fireballs, I have enough faith in her aim to say that you'll die just the same if you focus on me."

"And even if you manage to stop both of them," Elaine began, stepping onto the balcony. She moved to stand halfway between him and Murphy, her narrow wand glowing in imitation of his staves. At the sight of another wizard, the warlocks face suddenly became nervous. "I'm sure at least one of use will get you."

One by one, the other detectives ascended the stairs, lining up in a row and readying themselves to open a solid wall of fire if the warlock tried anything.

"Give up," Harry said quietly. "You can't win this."

The warlock's now darting eyes surveyed the crowd before him.

And then he threw himself over the edge of the balcony. The cops opened fire on him immediately, and though he brought up a shield of some sort, he apparently didn't do it quickly enough to avoid injury, because he cried out suddenly in pain. Landing on the lower level with a crash and a gasping cry, Harry rushed to the edge, ready to bring up a shield, but the man just ran for the back door. Several of the detectives aimed their guns at him.

"Hold your fire!" Murphy said, stopping them. "Remember his death curse! We have to disable him. Harry, can you?"

Ideally, he would have just surrendered, but Harry supposed criminals always had to do things the hard way. He glanced around at the floor before spotting what he'd been looking for.

Drops of blood, from the gunshot wounds.

"Elaine, you wanna take this guy down or should I?" He said, crouching by the blood. He received no response. "Elaine?"

"Harry…" She breathed, sounding stunned. When he looked at her, she was pointing a shaking finger towards something. Following with his eyes, he saw a symbol, drawn by the still immobile young men he'd seen before. At first, he thought it was just a circle, before his eyes took in the bigger picture.

It was a circle, yes—a circle inside a triangle, split vertically by a line.

The symbol of the Master of Death.

Harry felt himself stiffen. If this guy had that…and he had two helpers that they had detailed downstairs, plus two sacrifices up here…

"Elaine," He repeated, his voice sounding distant to his own ears. He rose quickly. "Focus. I need you to take this guy down. I want to have a few words with him."

And then he nearly jumped out of his own skin as an unexpected noise startled him.

The house shook with the sound of thunder.

In the moments after the sound faded, Harry's blood ran cold. The possibilities of what could happen next nearly made him shake—but he swallowed what he was feeling and forced himself to act. Not having time for the stairs, he followed the warlock by jumping off the balcony, shouted a faux Latin phrase, and caught himself with wind before he hit the floor.

In the moments he was in midair, he felt a sort of strange empathy with Wile E. Coyote, running straight off a cliff and feeling around at the empty air beneath him right before a great fall.

If this warlock was attempting to repeat the ritual they had preformed so long ago, things could get very bad, very quickly. It wasn't just the possibility of what might happen if the ritual succeeded, per se—because if things went like they had for Justin, the Master of Death would probably just kill the warlock and then leave or someone from the White Council would show up and make him leave. Granted, there was always the possibility that he…it…whatever had changed its mind since then and would kill them instead and they had no real way of predicting how an Outsider might react. It was also possible that maybe Justin _had_ done something wrong that time—he honestly couldn't remember; he'd spent most of that battle nearly out of his mind and away from things. In that case, there was even the possibility that this warlock wouldn't make that mistake or that he had a bargain with it. Maybe he even knew how to make it obey him.

But Harry sincerely doubted that. The guy hadn't exactly wowed him with his brilliance so far and he was using two normal humans in place of him and Elaine. He was pretty skeptical that this ritual would go any better with two untrained people then it had with two extra practitioners. In fact, he was almost certain it would go worse.

And that was what he was worried about. At the end of the day, there were two types of summoning rituals. The dangerous kind, where everything goes well—and the horrific kind, where something went _wrong_. There were demons, for example, who were dangerous liars even when there was a nice protective circle between you and them, but if there's a flaw in your circle, they were literally _contractually obligated to kill you_. And while he had no idea what the Master of Death's take on fucking up his rituals was, considering the guy was horrifically powerful nightmarish creature from beyond time and space who had absentmindedly ripped souls out of the afterlife, casually transfigured inanimate objects into living creatures, violated minds, slaughtered a bunch of vampires and his old Master and had prompted an immediate response from the Senior Council, Harry was content in _not knowing_.

So he rushed out the door mere seconds after the warlock, trying to cover the distance with his larger strides, but even then, he felt the air thrumming with power. The warlock was shouting something, but it was drowned out by the pattering of the rain, the sound of thunder, and the pounding of his own heartbeat.

The effects, however, were obvious. The air shimmered and shone, twisting and warping. There was a hiss and a sound like something coming quickly towards them before a dark, misshapen shape ripped its way through space itself and for a moment Harry was afraid—

And then a flash of lightning revealed its features. Its face was made of strange, leathery curves and its skin was rough looking and warty; it resembled, more than anything else, a large, humanoid toad, but for its eyes, that burnt with some kind of strange blue fire.

It was just a demon, he thought, somewhat disappointed.

Harry had to laugh in that moment, at his own relief. He was so pleased it was just some demon that he couldn't even be bothered to feel afraid.

"Keep him busy!" The warlock ordered. "Kill him if you can! I need some time to prepare!"

Harry bared his teeth in a cold smile.

"Just try it, ugly." He said, lifting his blasting rod. "_Forzare_!"

The focused blast of raw force must have hit the demon like a truck, but it just planted its feet and hunched its shoulders, resisting him. He pushed it back a foot, through the dirt, and then two more as he strained against it, before Harry realized something.

It wasn't _just_ a demon. It was a pretty badass demon. He was going to have a hell of a time trying to take it down with force alone—it was just too strong for it. Of course, using fire effectively in the rain would be difficult, too, but wind wouldn't be any more effective than force.

Difficult or not, fire was his best bet.

He let up on the demon to draw in his power, but before he could cast his spell, the demon opened its mouth and spat something at him.

As a firm holder to the philosophy of 'better to err on the side of not dying,' Harry didn't even wonder what it was; he just threw himself to the side and let it hit the doorframe of the house instead, which it promptly ate a hole larger than his fist through in a sudden cloud of foul smelling mist.

"Okay," He murmured, rolling to his feet as quickly as he could. "Feeling pretty smart right now. _Fuego_!"

The torrent of fire tore through the rain, weakening as it did, but when it hit the demon, it was still strong enough to set it on fire and elect a rough croak of enraged pain. The fire would go out soon, he knew, from the rain if nothing else, but Harry knew that he had the advantage as long as the demon was distracted by pain and he had no intention of giving it up.

And then he heard it.

"We wait for your arrival, O chaser of the cursed!" The warlock began in demented glee. He had nothing but a makeshift circle; he had no sacrifices, he had no assistants, he had nothing but a prayer.

And yet he was still trying to reach into the Outside and draw his targets attention. And maybe he would. He didn't have a prayer of controlling what he was going to raise up, but he might draw its eye and make it wonder what was here.

And whether or not that might be enough, the dumbass was trying.

And in that moment, Harry realized he was dealing with someone that was insane with his own power. Insane enough to get himself killed.

And, Harry thought as the storm clouds above him began to twist, spiraling like a snake, maybe insane enough drag a few people down with him.

Drowning out his fear with anger, he shifted him grip on his staff. When the toad demon's throat began to contract strangely, he swung it like a baseball bat and caught the resulting blob of acid with a sudden blast of wind, hurling it into the demon's face. Blue sparks flickered across the toad's skin and its ugly face twisted into either a grimace or a snarl, but the acid didn't seem to harm it.

Slightly annoyed but not particularly surprised, Harry didn't let it slow him down. Whipping up his blasting rod, he lashed out at its face with another blast of fire, hoping to blind it.

"Dresden!" A sudden voice shouted from the doorway. Glancing towards it reflexively, he immediately took several steps to the side, getting out of the way.

The moment he was, Murphy and her boys opened fire. The first shot took the demon right in one of its eyes and another took it somewhere in the forehead, whipping its head back, but most of them took it somewhere in the chest. Knowing how enduring demons could be, the officers didn't stop firing just with that and instead emptied their entire clips into the thing.

And when they ran empty the thing lowered its head again, one of its burning eyes put out and its chest littered with holes, bared its teeth, and began to approach. Demons were like that; they were creatures with no physical form in this world except the ones given to them by Ectoplasm. There probably weren't any organs in that thing, or anything to rupture or ruin with bullets. It didn't even have real blood or a brain. They were just vessels for a malicious, animating power from the Nevernever—and if you destroyed their vessels, so what? If they were called again, they could make a new one without any trouble.

To them, it was no more than putting on a suit.

There were other ways to get rid of the thing besides destroying it, though, and he quickly began running through his options. He'd intended to push the thing hard enough to shove into the lake, where the running water would dissolve it and send it back to where it came from, but that hadn't gone so great. If he could get a big enough fire going, despite the rain, he could purify it. If he got a circle around it, he could cut off its connection to the power keeping it here.

But creating a circle before it could realize what he was doing and escape before he could finish would require getting pretty close to it and probably getting torn to pieces. At the same time, however, making that big of a fire would be hard to do in this rain—

The rain.

From the storm that this warlock was using to power his spells.

"Throw your holy water at it and get back in the house!" Harry shouted, raising his staff to bat away a glob of acid the demon had shot at Murphy's face. He aimed it towards the warlock this time, where it impacted harmlessly with his circle. The guy looked up from within it and gave him a twisted smile, but didn't stop chanting.

"Way ahead of you!" One of the officers replied, his arm already pulled back to throw his vial. When it connected with the demon's hide, it shattered easily, spreading its contents across its skin.

And the demon howled in pain as the water ate it its skin. Even if it was just a vessel, a demon could feel holy water and it could hurt him, distract him.

It was enough.

As the last of the cops threw their vials and then slammed the door of the house closed with a bang, Harry looked up at the sky. The spiraling clouds up above were narrowing out towards the center, becoming sleeker and more serpentine by the moment—and yet, it didn't seem to affect the storm at all. The lightning and the rain still fell unhindered; the thunder still shook the earth.

Harry reached for it. For the roiling power that seethed in the storm.

He let his blasting rod fall from his finger, tossing it down to the damp ground. With his now free hand, he pointed at the demon, even as he lifted his staff up to the sky. As the demon shook itself and recovered, he bared his teeth at it.

"I'm sending you back to hell, you son of a bitch! _Ventas! Ventas Fulmino!_"

A spark leapt from the end of his staff then, a tiny thing that fought its way up through the wind and the rain and touched the restless belly of the storm.

And the Heavens came roaring down in response.

The lightning fell upon his upraised staff, before traveling through his hand into him. He felt his muscles spasm and convulse as the current ran through him. He struggled through the pain and the power, drawing upon distant memories of Elaine telling him how lightning magic worked, keeping the energy from running awry as best he could. It was hard, terribly hard, to control it—the power of nature itself that tried to run free and smite him for his impudence. If he lost control and it got anywhere near his heart, it would kill him in an instant. 

For a long, agonizing second, he held that energy inside him, the possibilities causing him fear and his will turning fear into power to fuel his control—and then he let that energy flow out, down his arm and out through the fingers he held extended towards the now terrified toad-demon. The rage of the storm hit it right in the heart, lashing out with unbelievable speed. The lance of power, white-hot and blinding, didn't just push the demon back—it threw it up into the air. And it held him there, the lightning flowing into it, through it, and across its skin until it was shrouded in a veil of energy so bright that Harry couldn't even look at it.

And then it exploded in bright blue flames.

The night grew silent in the wake of nature's power. Night vision ruined by the onslaught he'd unleashed, he could only pant in the dark as flaming bits of toad demon rained down around him, their tiny flames the only illumination until the rain put them out with a quiet hiss.

He shook for a moment, trying to stay upright, before his legs gave out, sending him down to the muddy grass. His hair was suddenly dry, though it had been slick with the rain just a moment before, and he could smell smoke coming from somewhere near his hands, but he didn't seem to be harmed, even if he was trembling from the forces he'd just channeled.

That demon was _charcoal_, though. He couldn't keep himself from grinning at the thought.

Maybe Elaine had something with that whole lightning thing.

The door of the house swung open again and he heard several of the detective's step onto the wet yard, the mud squishing beneath their boots.

"_Damn_." One said, breathless with awe. Harry knew he was being looked at and wanted to tell them to focus, but he couldn't get the words out through his panting.

Fortunately, he didn't need to.

"Concentrate!" Murphy snapped. "You can ogle the wizard later; we're not done yet. Surround the warlock and keep your guns on him at all times. And someone break that damn circle so Mallory can shut him down."

As the other SI detectives hurried to comply, a dark shape he assumed was Murphy knelt beside him.

"You okay, Harry?" She asked, concerned.

He nodded his head as he slowed his breathing to normal levels.

"I'm fine. We get the guy?" He asked.

Murphy turned her head glancing over somewhere currently beyond his vision.

"Yeah. Elaine had some trouble getting him with that circle in place but it's not a problem now." She said, offering him a hand.

Harry rose to his feet with her help, though he had to be careful to not pull her off balance, she was so much smaller than him. After he was sure his legs weren't suddenly going to give out beneath him, he turned to look at the warlock even as another lightning bolt light up the night.

The detectives had him flat on the ground, his hands behind his back. Harry had expected for him to struggle or rage against his captors, to be furious that his power had been bound and taken away from him.

But he didn't. He just silently went along with what he was ordered to do, not putting up anything that might constitute a fight.

For a moment, Harry thought he might have given up.

But then the warlock turned his head from his position on the ground and gave him a silent, knowing smile, the lightning throwing his face into sharp contrast—

The lightning that had persisted for seconds.

The lightning that still hadn't faded.

The lightning that had never been followed by thunder.

Harry slowly lifted his eyes to the illuminated sky, even as he heard the whistle of a train.

As if it had been waiting for his attention, the train came careening from the clouds in that moment, riding on tracks of lightning. It rode just beneath the clouds, to the point that the billows of smoke that should have come from it merged seamlessly with the clouds overhead, to the point that there seemed to be no difference between them. It began to circle on its jagged blazing tracks, slowing down high above them, until it came to a complete stop.

"Harry," Murphy whispered, awed. "What is that?"

Harry had to lick his suddenly dry lips before replying.

"Let's just say that Death rides an Iron Horse."

After a moment of stillness, a shape detached itself from the train and floated to the center of the circle it now created. The lightning threw shadows over his features and he was too far away to see well besides, but Harry knew who it was. He knew what it was.

'_Ah,'_ A soft voice murmured in his mind as the figure looked down. _'It has been some time since last we met, hasn't it? Hello again, Harry Dresden.'_

Harry shivered.

Probably because of the rain, he told himself.

Yeah, right.

Knowing that the Outsider could shift through his thoughts as easily now as it had so many years before made him want to freak out a bit or try to shunt him out, memories of searing pain and claws inside his skull making his heart beat faster, but he wasn't completely sure he'd enjoy the results of either action—and something told him that the Master of Death had a lot more experience with minds then he did. Even so, he tried to keep his thoughts focused, so that nothing he didn't want to be seen would rise to the surface of his mind.

He only partially succeeded.

'_Are you afraid of me, Mr. Dresden?'_ It asked. _'Come now, what have I done to deserve fear. I rather thought we parted on good terms last time. I'm not that intimidating, am I?'_

Harry slowly formulated a response, mainly because he had to keep the dozen things that immediately sprang to mind from being seen. The Outsider floated quietly on the surface of his mind, not trying to force his way further in, but if he didn't control his mind his thoughts would be still be visible.

But with the thing violating a dozen laws of physics by flying effortlessly in the middle of a circle of blazing lightning that somehow supported the entire weight of his long, black train, it was kind of difficult. He couldn't get passed the sheer number of rules they broke just by existing.

'_I'm just surprised to see you again,"_ He lied, because to be honest, he _was_ afraid, from both a personal and a professional standpoint. Since that day where he and Elaine had broken the Seventh Law against their own will, both his grandfather and the Gatekeeper had warned him about Outsiders as best they could—which wasn't well, because they couldn't seem to _talk_ about Outsiders, but their warnings had been clear; far clearer then that half-forgotten night, anyway. And further still, what little he did remember mainly consisted of something that felt jagged hooks being torn out of his skull and a somewhat distracted British oice speaking to him pleasantly through it all.

'_Hm,'_ The Outsider hummed amusedly, and it was pretty obvious he hadn't bought it. He didn't call Harry on it, though. _'Yes, I suppose it is a bit of a surprise. I figured you would probably still be alive in this time period, but I hadn't thought I'd be summoned right to you yet again. I'd thought of looking for you next time I was summoned, though, so I suppose it works out.'_

The thought that not only did some extra-dimensional super-being remember him but actually thought about _hunting him down_ made Harry more than a little bit concerned, but the creatures focus drew away for a moment before he could say anything.

'_Who is your lady friend, Mr. Dresden?'_ It asked inquisitively. _'I must admit, I'd rather expected to see Mrs. Mallory again. Is she okay? I was sure I'd fixed her mind properly…'_

'_She's fine,'_ Harry said, even more uncomfortable with the Outsider focused on Elaine then he had been with it on himself. _'She's…around.'_

'_That's good,' _It said amiably. '_I am glad she is okay. Say hello for me when you next see her. Now then, why don't I come down there and you can introduce me to your friends.'_

And the dark shape shadowed by the lightning began to lower towards the Earth.

"Harry," Murphy repeated. "What the hell is that?"

"They call him the Master of Death and he's some kind of monster from beyond Creation," He whispered back. "Or maybe some kind of ancient demon or God that got kicked out there. That's all I know and, well, even if I knew more, I couldn't tell you anything more than that about him, because the White Council considers knowing anything else a _death-worthy trespass_. It's the only type of thing they'll kill people over that doesn't require casting a spell."

Murphy swallowed.

"How dangerous is he?" She asked, a hand travelling to her gun in a nervous gesture that most people wouldn't have recognized as such.

"Really, really dangerous. I'm not sure how he does what he does, but he's got a ridiculous amount of magic backing him up, or something—or, at least, that's the only thing I can think of to explain what he does. Teleportation, turning inanimate objects into living things, and resurrecting the dead are things I know he can do for sure, but since I was only near him for a few minutes, that list isn't exclusive. Oh, and he can fly, too, I guess."

"Resurrect the _dead_?" She repeated, eyebrows raising.

"He brought back my mom and dad," He confirmed. "As far as I can tell, it was really them, too. They weren't solid, but they weren't ghosts, either."

"And that train?"

Harry looked up where it rested quietly in the sky, the lightning effortlessly holding it up.

He looked back down at Murphy and shrugged.

"I have no freaking clue how that thing works." He admitted. "Anyway, let's try to get through this without starting a fight."

He glanced meaningfully towards her gun and Murphy removed her hand from it as the Master of Death reached the ground and approached.

"My, Mr. Dresden," He said. "Look how you've grown!"

Harry gave him a slightly forced smile.

"You look…well?" He guessed, knowing the human guise wasn't the being's true form.

The apparent old man smiled at him and nodded before shifting his gaze to Murphy.

"Hello, officer," The Outsider said. "It's a pleasure to meet you. I'm glad to see Mr. Dresden has made some friends while I was gone. Are you a policeman now, Mr. Dresden?"

Harry cleared his throat.

"No; Elaine and I are private detectives."

"We hire them as consultants for cases, sometimes," Murphy added, shooting Harry a strange glance, probably at how the Master of Death looked and acted.

"I'm sure they do a wonderful job," The Outsider said confidently.

Murphy shrugged, not sure how she was supposed to act in this situation.

"Yeah, they do."

The disguised being hummed happily.

"It's always nice to see children doing well." The Master of Death said, smiling happily. "Now, then, why don't we take a seat and you can tell me why I've been summoned. I'll make us some tea and a place to sit and we can discuss it, hm?"

**XxXXxX**

A bush near the house twisted and writhed, uprooting itself before shambling toward the Master of Death. Settling at his feet, the bush shuddered once before suddenly expanding, its branches merging together and turning into a richer colored wood as it turned into an ornate table large enough for a small family to dine at. The now gentle rain scattered droplets of water over its surface for several seconds before an umbrella grew out of the table, shielding it from the rain. The water drops on the table's surface began to move as soon as the rain stopped falling on it, gathering into a trio of puddles from which three delicate looking tea cups arose. Three chairs appeared around the table, forming silently out of midair.

"Please, take a seat," The Outsider said, smiling slightly as they stared. "What type of tea would you like? I'm a bit partial to black tea, but I learned how to make pretty much all of them in my time in China."

"Whatever you'd prefer is fine, I guess," Harry said, having no opinion on tea; he was a firm coffee drinker and he didn't care who knew it. Besides which, he had no intention of drinking anything some ancient horror offered him.

"You were in China?" Murphy asked, ignoring the glance Harry shot her.

"It was a long time ago, but yes," The Outsider said as tea filled the cups. He took a slow sip and sighed in satisfaction. "The leader of the Chinese wizards was upset because some British wizard—whose name I cannot recall for the life of me—was causing an incident so I was called in to deal with it. That was shortly after I became the head of the Aurors, I believe…my, how the time flies."

Murphy lifted the cup near her, before flicking it with one finger, checking to see that it was real. She sniffed the tea once, shrugged, and took a sip before Harry's wide eyes.

"Murphy!" He whispered urgently.

"What's an Auror?" Murphy asked. "Is that Latin?"

"It's—"

"Knowledge from Beyond the Outer Gates," Harry interrupted flatly. "For which the punishment of learning is death."

The Outsider lifted an eyebrow at that.

"Is it?" He asked. "My, the laws of magic certainly are strict concerning me, aren't they? In that case, it's probably for the best I don't tell you, Ms. Murphy, but you can think of me as a Law Enforcement Officer, like you, or MI5 and MI6, or the…what are they called in America? The Navy Seals or FBI? Something like that. Only I hunt down wizards, instead, and, admittedly, my laws are quite a bit different from yours or Mr. Dresden's. And, no, I don't believe it's Latin; one of my best friends—actually, I probably shouldn't say her name…but she once told me it was from a Hebrew word meaning 'the cursed' and she's rarely wrong. Hardly a flattering name, but I suppose it could be worse."

Wonderful, Harry thought. He was an elite special-ops wizard-hunting abomination from beyond the world.

This was just getting better and better.

Murphy nodded to show that she understood, taking another sip of her tea.

"You wanted to know why you were summoned, right?" Harry said, trying to steer the conversation back on track.

"Ah, yes; I suppose now isn't the time for pleasantries. Rashid will be here soon and if possible I'd rather avoid him," The Outsider said, putting down his tea cup and looking at him. "Why am I here, Mr. Dresden? Did you summon me?"

Harry nearly choked at the comment and quickly shook his head.

"Of course not! The Council would have my head! It was—"

"It was me!" The warlock interjected, suddenly struggling with the officers on either side of him. "I summoned you! Help me! They're going to kill me!"

Harry couldn't help but twitch; that warlock sure was sounding a lot less arrogant now that he was powerless. But he didn't take his eyes off the Master of Death, waiting for his response.

Now was the moment of truth. It all depended on how the Outsider would react.

For a moment, the being was silent.

"Hm…" He finally voiced, intertwining his fingers. His voice didn't imply a thing, but when raised an eyebrow at Harry, he took it as a sign that he was supposed to explain.

"He's a murder," Harry said quickly. "And a warlock. He broke the First Law by killing with magic and he's been selling dangerous and harmful drugs to the people of Chicago, which is against mortal law, too."

Harry felt some kind of mental probe reach out to touch his mind, but it slid in and got back out before he could even raise his shields. The Outsider nodded and looked towards Murphy.

"I'm afraid I'm not very familiar with Chicago's drug laws."

Murphy took a deep breath and seemed ready to start a monologue, but Harry put a hand on her shoulder, stopping her. A moment later the Outsider looked away from her, nodding again, and Harry guess he'd probably already sorted through Murphy's mind. He wanted to say something scathing, but he didn't get a chance before the being stood up.

"Well?" The Master of Death asked, tilting his head as he walked towards the still bound warlock. "Do you have anything to say in your defense? If you have something that contradicts what they have said, I'd be more than happy to hear it."

"Its…T-they…you c-can't…" The warlock stuttered over his denial, shaking his head as the Outsider approached.

"'It's not true,'" The Master of Death translated calmly. "'They're lying to you. They're all in Marcone's pocket and he sent them here to kill me. You can't believe what they say.' It would be helpful if you spoke clearly and concisely, Mr. Sells, to prevent any misunderstandings from occurring."

The warlock—Mr. Sells, apparently—attempted to step back, suddenly trying to escape.

"I—" He began.

"'Was set up,'" The Outsider finished, nodding as if he understood and gave a polite, professional smile. He was less than a foot in front of the man now. "Do not worry, Mr. Sells; I will bring the truth to light."

He laid a gentle hand on the head of the shaking man, who suddenly gasped, arching his back.

"Even if you do not want me to," He finished, looking dispassionately down at the man.

The Outsider held the man like that for several seconds, expression blank and disinterested, like it meant nothing to him whether Sells was innocent or guilty. Then, he simply let go and the man sagged down in relief, held up only by the arms of the now very nervous looking cops on either side of him.

The Master of Death looked down at him quietly for a moment and Harry couldn't see if there was any expression on his face, but there wasn't when the being turned back towards him and Murphy. He gestured with the wand he held and the panting man sagged even more, like someone had cut his strings.

When Harry stood up in alarm, the Outsider calmly shook his head.

"I just put him in an enchanted sleep." He said. "I imagine Rashid will be here before too long—you can hand him over then. You can sit down now, gentlemen; put him by the house."

With a gesture, several more seats appeared around the table. The rain water falling from the edges of the umbrella twisted in midair, forming small streams that bent towards the center of the table, turning into tea cups full of tea as they touched it. The officers glanced nervously at Murphy, moving to place the man by the house after receiving a nod.

As the Auror returned to his seat and settled into it, Harry couldn't help but notice that he looked somewhat distracted, as if organizing his thoughts. He nodded to himself once, apparently coming to a decision.

"Ms. Murphy, I believe I understand everything that has happened so far, including several pieces of information I don't believe you are aware of. If you could do me a favor, I would be more than willing to share."

Harry and Murphy looked at each other as one. They both knew to be wary whenever someone mentioned a deal.

Even so…

"What kind of favor?" Murphy asked.

"The man's name is Victor Sells," The Outsider said. "He has a wife and two kids; Monica, Jenny, and Billy Sells. The wife has been abused mentally and physically, first by her father and then by her husband. I could be wrong, but I believe that America has systems for taking care of both witnesses and the abused, don't they?"

"Tch," Micky Malone said, approaching. "This guy was a real peach all around, huh? Do you have an address?"

A piece of paper appeared on the table. Micky picked it up, read it several times, and nodded.

"I'll handle this Murphy," He said, receiving a nod in response. He shot the hot tea cup on the table a glance, sighed, and left.

"Thank you, officer." The Outsider said. "Ask your questions, Ms. Murphy."

"Do you know why the two murder victims, Tommy Tom and Jennifer Stanton, were killed?" Murphy asked, producing a pen and some paper from her uniform.

"Jennifer Stanton was the sister of Monica Sells," The Auror said dutifully. "When she learned about her older sister's situation, she threatened to go to the police and someone named 'Gentleman Johnny Marcone' with what she knew. So he killed her and the spell affected both of them due to their intimacy at the time."

Nodding, she wrote that down.

"And the couple out front?" She asked.

"The Beckitts," He said. "Victor needed financial backers. Mr. Marcone had killed their daughter, so he promised them revenge. In addition, he used their emotions to power his magic and his rituals—just as he had with Monica."

"Is anyone else involved?"

"Yes; a man working for Mr. Marcone. His name is Lawrence. And a woman named Linda, a friend of Jennifer who was going to do the same thing she had done and expose Victor; if you ask her, I'm sure she'll have some more evidence for you. He was going to kill her tonight. If you have the Beckitts, you can find her fairly easily, I imagine; she works as their driver, at the moment."

"I know her," Harry said. "I don't know the name, but I've probably met Lawrence, too."

"We'll deal with them." Murphy said, closing her notepad. "That should be everything."

The Outsider nodded, rising.

"It's just as well," He said. "I should leave before Rashid gets here."

And just like that, the Master of Death began to rise into the air.

"Mr. Dresden," He continued. "When Rashid gets here, tell him the Circle was involved with this. He'll know what to do. It was nice to see you again, Mr. Dresden. Goodbye, Ms. Murphy. Until next time."

The Outsider waved at them, before turning and flying back up to his train.

Harry and Murphy just watched go for a moment, as he boarding his flying train of death. As the train began to move and the lightning beneath it started to churn, Murphy looked at him.

"He seems nice," She said.

"I guess," Harry sighed. "Come on; we still have things to do before we're done."

Murphy sighed as well.

"Yes," She agreed. "Including paying a visit to Marcone so we can accuse one of his subordinates of betraying him."

**XxXXxX**


	8. To The Forgotten Places

**The Master of Death**

**To The Forgotten Places**

The train slowly ground to a halt by the edge of the forest. White snow covered everything in sight, but that did not hinder the train. It ran perfectly fine atop it, freezing the snow into tracks of ice beneath its weight.

"We're here, sir," His companion said. "Are you sure this is where we're supposed to be, though? There's no signal here."

Harry smiled at it.

"Of course there isn't," He said. "This is before the first ritual to contact us was made. There are no signals prior to that point in time, so we will operate under the assumption that the ritual wasn't created yet at this point in time. And who would create it besides us? What can you tell me about this time?"

"We're…" His fellow traveler squinted his eyes, as if staring at something. "In the early Mesolithic period, I believe. The Middle Stone Age, prior to recorded human history on this world. As you asked, we're in the area that will one day be called the British Isles. Are you certain this Queen Mab will be here?"

"No," Harry admitted freely. "But she was supposed to be at our next stop—and this is our next stop. She didn't tell me where this party would be held and I really don't have much to go on in finding it."

"…Um…" His other companion looked uncertain. "…Then why here, sir?"

He shrugged.

"The world is a large place, my friend, and finding someone in it is hard if you don't know where to look—picking out places at random isn't going to get us anywhere, especially if we try searching the Nevernever, too. If nothing else, I know that Shakespeare mentioned a Queen Mab in one of his plays and I know that the name Mab is an Irish, Gaelic, and Welsh name, so we'll try in this area first. And since I don't know where in the British Isles a Faerie Queen might live, we'll start with the place I consider most magical. If I can't track her down like that, then I have other ways of finding people."

"Okay, sir," His companions agreed. "I'm sure you'll be successful."

"Thank you," Harry said. "I'll place some wards around the train to keep anyone from noticing it, just in case."

The doors hissed open and Harry moved to the doorway, inhaling deeply. The chilled air of the younger Earth was as fresh as it could be, the forests and the fields still untouched by the hands of man.

…He couldn't say it was unpleasant, but he still preferred the cities, where he could see men and women bustling through their daily lives. Where people laughed and argued and smiled and enjoyed the comforts of their lives. He liked places that were full of people and the things they had created many times more than quiet, seemingly empty forests.

But then, most of the time he'd spent in the wilderness involved someone or something trying to kill him—and perhaps the same would be true of this one, before he was done. So maybe that had something to do with it, too.

He hesitated at the doorway, turning back as he remembered something.

"I'm sorry," He said. "I forgot to ask because of everything that has been happening, but that doesn't excuse my rudeness. I'm Harry Potter. May I ask your names?"

"Ah!" The one that had stayed beside him during the trip voice, his eyes widening. "I'm afraid I forgot as well, sir. It's a pleasure to met you, I'm—"

What followed consisted of thirty-seven syllables and consisted of several sounds he was not certain a human voice box could make. Writing it would have involved a large number of accent marks and hyphens and would have been annoying besides. His brother gave a similarly strange name.

Harry kept smiling and nodded once. He could speak mermish, so it was hard get to him with things that would be hard for normal people to pronounce; he'd won a bet with Hermione that had involved the chemical name of titin.

Even so, he had to ask.

"Is it okay if I come up with nicknames for you? I don't mean to offend you, but casual conversation will be a little bit difficult with those names."

"Yes, sir," The driver said. "It certainly is. Mother allowed our uncle to name us because of some sort of deal, I'm afraid, and he has a very unique sense of humor which revolves around not being funny."

"I know people like that," Harry said sympathetically. "I'll be back before long, if everything goes well."

With a nod farewell, he stepped off the train and down into the snow and moved to the edge of the forest.

In his world, this would have been the Forbidden Forest. That area beyond the train would have been where Hogwarts stood, given thousands of years. This place would have been one of the most magical places in the world.

But that was just his world. There was nothing to say this forest was anything but normal, here. Nothing even implied that anything but normal animals lurked within it.

And yet just looking at it made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He didn't sense anything; it wasn't even an instinct. It was just that after over a hundred years of seeing this forest and having had to go into it many, many times…his mind couldn't even consider it to be normal, even if nothing said it wasn't.

But even if it made him wary, he wasn't afraid of it. He ventured into the Forest in his world many times, often alone, and made it through just fine.

So he pulled his cloak tightly around himself and ventured into it, off to look for faeries.

**XxXXxX**

Even after several minutes of walking, Harry hadn't seen or heard anything, which put him immediately on guard. In a forest like this, there should have been _something_ making noise, whether birds, insects, or any number of animals.

"It's quiet," Harry said softly, smiling slightly in amusement. He didn't get to say cliché lines like these as often as one might think. "_Too_ quiet."

If it was this silent in the middle of an untouched forest, there were really only a few explanations. It could actually be empty of all life, which brought up the question of 'why.' It could be that everything was hiding from something, in which case he had to wonder 'what.' Or, it could have been emptied _by_ someone, meaning he'd have to wonder 'who.'

No matter which, he had to be on his guard.

It occurred to him, however, that if he hadn't picked up anything yet, then it might not be something a normal human's could sense.

He hummed to himself, half hoping the noise would draw something out.

It didn't, so he'd have to do this the hard way.

He looked at the snow feet and held an image in his head, gesturing with his wand. An area about two meters in length began to shift, as if something large and powerful was moving just beneath the surface. A skeleton of frosted ice lifted its way from the snow, rising to all fours, even as the snow began to twist its way up its limbs, forming powdery muscles before a smooth sheet of snow rose to cover it like skin. The snow was broken as course looking hairs began to cover every inch of the animated construct. The creature shook itself, and excess snow fell from its body as it did so, revealing brown and grey fur, born from the snow in the blink of an eye.

Yawned widely, the Silvertip Grizzly Bear turned to give its creator its attention. Fearless of his transfigured beast, Harry moved to its side and lifted himself up onto its back.

"Find me something," Harry said. "Living or dead, it doesn't matter."

The bear shifted beneath him, sneezed once, and began to sniff the ground and the air. Harry knew that if there was anything to be found, this bear would find it. With a sense of smell seven times stronger than a Bloodhound, it could smell a corpse from nearly thirty kilometers away and track down things in the same range.

Plus, it gave him a chance to ride a bear, which was always nice.

Apparently finding something, his bear shifted again before taking off at a reasonable pace into the woods. Its massive weight crunched against the snow in a steady rhythm until Harry silenced them with a Charm. As they moved through the forest, Harry looked around casually, quietly making himself aware of where everything was. He wasn't really looking for anything, trusting his rides nose above his own eyes—it was just an ingrained habit.

And yet, it did accomplish one thing. Even as they continued through the forest, they didn't come across any type of fauna. Even if things were hiding, he had a hard time believing that _nothing_ would have appeared by now.

Without a doubt, something had removed everything from the area. It could be some type of ward that convinced all animal life to avoid the area.

Or it could be that someone exterminated them all.

He had no way of knowing until he found something.

And as the forest gave way to lakeside, he did. He wasn't completely sure what it was that he'd found, but it was definitely something.

A group of unconscious looking animals were being boarded onto a strange ship that looked like a giant sea shell by a quartet of even stranger looking 'men.' One had one leg, one arm, and one eye, and another looked like a man with the head of a goat. The other two, however, could have almost passed for exceptionally tall and handsome men, if ones with strangely colored hair. Not one of them was below seven feet of height and the tallest, the goat headed man, stood at a towering fifteen feet and was muscled like a body builder on steroids and carried a red deer under each arm.

As he came into sight, the four of them turned towards him and his bear, glancing at him in surprise for a moment before frowning in consideration. The Goat man and the one with a single arm and leg turned towards their human like companions and spoke in a language that Harry didn't understand.

Harry couldn't keep himself from frowning slightly. It had been a long time since he hadn't understood what people were saying around him. When the four of them turned back towards him and examined him and his bear, like he was a pet they were considering buying, it did nothing to help his discomfort.

The shortest man, a guy with black hair and eyes that were grey in both the iris and the sclera, said something back and the goat man put down his deer, slowly rubbing his hands together. He cracked his knuckles and then his neck and Harry raised an eyebrow.

He supposed that if this was the Mesolithic period, it wasn't a cliché yet, but he still silently labeled the man as the Muscle.

The Goat said something him that Harry didn't understand, approaching.

Harry looked at him flatly, tapping his bear with his wand. The Bear lifted itself onto its hind legs, letting Harry slide off its back. Its musculature shifted, becoming more humanoid, even as it began to grow, swelling to match the goat in size, and then to surpass it, baring its teeth at the goat as Harry slipped out from behind its leg and raised an eyebrow.

"Are you certain that's wise?" He asked, even knowing they wouldn't understand him.

The Goat looked uncertain, but the grey eyed man just laughed and said something Harry assumed to be insulting, because the Goat's face twisted in ugly, goat rage.

It drew back its fist, readying it to punch at the bear's face in a sharp jab, but Harry had already seen it coming and had ordered his creation to respond.

A moment before it could throw its punch, the Bear's fist connected with the Goat's face.

Not waiting around for someone to realize that he was the one in charge, Harry immediately took to the air. The strange creature that somehow managed to move agilely on one leg immediately moved to join his companion against the Bear.

The other two, however, never took their eyes off of Harry. In fact, they were conversing enthusiastically about him…or at least he thought so. They were speaking as they pointed at him and watched what he did.

Harry paused for a moment, reevaluating the situation. All the animals were unconscious, but otherwise seemed largely unharmed. And the two giants were trying to restrain his bear, rather than kill it.

Why would they go through all that trouble, though, instead of just hunting them for food?

Because they weren't after food, of course—or not just food, at least. They wanted them for other reasons; livestock, maybe, though that wouldn't explain why they had captured the beavers, mice, voles, rabbits, or most of the animals they captured, really. No, that didn't hold up.

Pets, maybe? He didn't think most people kept deer and wildcats as pets, but he'd seen weirder things.

But unless there was a _really_ high demand for pets, he couldn't see a need for all of these animals.

None of the explanations he could think of made sense with this many different species of animals, especially if it somehow required that all of them be alive.

And also…where they eyeing _him_ like he was livestock?

Harry frowned down at the pair of man-like giants.

He could sit up here all day, but that wouldn't answer his questions. Of course, trying to talk to people who only spoke a language he didn't understand probably wouldn't get him very far either.

On the other hand, they were boarding those animals onto that ship, so it stood to reason that they were going to take them somewhere. Probably even somewhere he could get answers.

He could work with that.

He glanced towards his bear, still standing tall under his Human-Shape Charm. Against two opponents, it was having some trouble; the two giants were even stronger than their sizes implied, it seemed.

No matter.

He flicked his wand towards his creation, drawing on a spell he'd learned when he'd been preparing for the First Task, all those years ago. Under the effects of the Pepper Breath Charm, the bear exhaled a burst of fire, making his opponents stumble back in sudden, unexpected pain.

In the seconds their pain bought him, Harry continued his work on the bear. Its claws lengthened and sharpened, becoming something more akin to wicked blades then natural growths, even as plates of glimmering armor formed around its body.

Roaring once, it leapt at the goat man in a sudden fury, lashing at its opponent's sides in an apparently uncontrolled assault—and yet none of its blows struck either of them anywhere that might be lethal. It drew its claws across their arms and chests, leaving painful cuts, but they were nothing but surface wounds, meant to drive back and intimidate.

The two larger giants drew back several steps after a few such wounds, wary, but the transfigured bear merely pressed forward, causing them to give ground and slowly but surely pushing them back towards the ship where they would hopefully cut their losses and try to make their escape.

And then a blob of some green substance flew through the air and impacted with the Bear's face. In the course of several seconds, it completely dissolved its snout and had devoured the flesh from the rest of its head.

The grey-eyed man snorted and said something to the two thug-like giants, which Harry guess to be another insult of some sort. He'd apparently decided the bear was more trouble than it was worth, but had turned his eyes to look up at Harry with a strange, discomforting gleam in his eyes.

He looked at the remains of his bear, a bit put-out.

"I was beginning to get attached to that bear," He said, more to himself then to anyone else. "I was going to give it wings and turn it strange colors just because; if my grand-daughters were here, they would have loved."

He sighed as he Apparated down to the ground, dodging the…actually, he wasn't sure what the other human-like giant had thrown at him. Some strange looking multicolored ball.

"Oh, well," He said, sweeping his wand in a wide arc. Immediately, the unconscious animals, placed haphazardly on the ground, began to stir, waking. "I am a Gryffindor…"

He twisted his wand once with deliberate slowness, and as one the larger animals began to change.

"…So I suppose this is more fitting anyway, huh?"

Shaking themselves from the last remnants of their slumber, the pride of lions rose to their feet—and growled as they laid eyes on their captors.

Harry tilted his head slightly, looking at the two leaders. He kept his wand up, ready to attack or Apperate as needed.

"I think maybe you should leave, Gentlemen," He said, knowing they probably just thought he was speaking gibberish.

The taller of the two leaders growled and moved to step forward, his hands starting to glow a sickly green. The lion nearest him began to swell in size, but rather then look afraid, he lifted his hand towards it without even looking and Harry had a feeling he knew where the acid that had killed his bear had come from.

But the other leader just laughed. Harry pursued his lips and looked at him intently, knowing from experience that people that could be that relaxed while surrounded by things that could kill them were one of two things; dangerously insane or insanely dangerous.

The other giant hesitated in blowing off his lion's face, but didn't lower his hand. Instead, the giant slowly turned his body and took a few steps back so that he could look at Harry, the lion, and his fellow giant at the same time. Harry mentally filed him away as being quick to anger, but not stupid. The two strange looking giants he kept under Thugs, though.

The grey-eyed giant said something to his partner, mirth in his voice. The other giant straightened immediately, his expression shocked and outraged, rambling of a quick stream of upset words, only to fall silent as the short giant said something in a dangerously calm voice. Sure now that he was the leader, Harry continued to watch the smallest giant warily, tensing as the man lifted a hand.

And then blinked in surprise when the giant just waved, smiled at him slightly, and said something that made Harry wish he knew the language they were speaking. With the other three, he could at least tell roughly what they were feeling when the talked or reacted to the grey-eyed man's words, be it anger, fear, or wariness, but their leader just kept that calm, amused expression he'd had since he'd started watching Harry.

Was he being threatened, insulted, praised, or what? He couldn't tell at all and he didn't like it.

He was in the middle of contemplating whether or not he should risk using Legilimancy on something that may well have had a mind very different from that of a human's when the man turned around and walked back into his ship, quickly followed by the others, though they kept a wary eye on the lions. The doors of the ship closed and after a long, silent moment, it suddenly jerked into motion, detaching from the shore.

He slowly exhaled, nodding to himself. It appeared that wouldn't be necessary quite yet.

He waited for several seconds, not sure if they were watching him or not, before undoing his transfigurations, returning the animals to their normal state.

"Go on now," He said, hardly paying them attention except to make sure none of them attacked him as he quickly moved to the edge of the water, where the boat had rested moments before. He gestured at them as several watched him wary, trying to decide what to do, and ordered them sharply. "Go back to doing…whatever you normally do."

He crouched by the shore, narrowing his eyes at the retreating boat. Without a doubt, it wasn't just moving away from the edge of the lake.

It was sinking into the water.

Where ever it was going was underneath the surface.

"Interesting." He mused, rising and striding forward into the water. He moved his wand to tap it against his forehead as he walked, slowly dragging it down his nose to his chin, all the way down the length of his throat, before pulling it down the front of his clothes like it was a zipper. His glasses turned into a large pair of goggles, while his clothes turned into a wetsuit that covered everything below the gills that had formed on his neck. He transfigured his shoes into flippers, spelled his wand, cloak, and hair to be waterproof, and slid beneath the waves to follow the ship.

And then, having had his fun, he charmed his flippers to do all the actually work for him, and speed up his pursuit.

He didn't see any windows, which may or may not have meant there actually weren't any there, but he stayed a few meters behind the ship just in case. He scanned the bottom of the lake, trying to figure out where they were going, but he didn't see anything…

Until a gate to the Nevernever began to open at the bottom of the ship.

Eyes widening, he willed his flippers to move faster, closing the distance to cling to the side of the ship as it passed through the gateway.

Looking around quickly, he found that he was still underwater, but obviously much, much deeper down. It was too far beneath the surface to see the light, and he tightened his grip around his wand, ready to cast a spell to counter the water pressure, only to find there wasn't any.

Instead he cast a spell to allow him to see in the dark and just as quickly wished he hadn't. There were things shifting in the depths, twisted, ugly looking things. They looked like twisted versions of normal creatures, but not just fish. There was some kind of featherless agonizing bird-fish hybrid swimming a short distance away and a warped deer and some kind of furless wrinkled cat thing.

They were all hideous and Harry couldn't help but think he knew what they were gathering animals for.

Luckily, they all avoided the ship and he appeared to be safe so long as he clung to it. Even so, he drew his cloak around himself protectively, hiding himself from sight, casting a sticking charm to hold himself in place. Then, not seeing anything else to do, he quietly sat there on the side of the ship, waiting for something to happen as piteous creatures swam all around him.

Fifteen minutes later, just as he was getting bored, the ship began to stop. Waiting several beats, he cancelled his Sticking Charm and peaked around the edge of the boat, only to see someone coming towards him. Ducking back around the ship, he readied his wand in case he'd been noticed—but the man, another giant, though one with two fish tails instead of legs didn't even look at him. He glanced around the ship, probably to make sure they weren't being followed, and continued his circuit around the boat.

He heard two people speaking out of sight and they began to move again. Only then did he see what the holdup had been about, as they passed through some kind of gate. Minutes later, after they'd left the gate far behind, he figured it was safe, and began to crawl up the side of the ship to see where they were.

It wasn't what he had been expecting.

There was a field of towers beneath the sea. Towers made of what looked like gold and silver and glass, all manner of beautiful things, carefully put together in a way that somehow looked like it had grown into existence naturally. Something lit up the city, sending light gleaming across a thousand polished surfaces. The ship swam through the city among dozens or hundreds of other crafts of various sizes, heading towards one of the larger buildings at the center of the beautiful place.

He glanced around, mentally noting places that seemed big and important, before deciding to start where these hunters were heading, wanting to know what they did with their prey. As they parked beside a building that was largely silver and someone opened the doors to welcome his 'drivers' back, he detached from the ship and swam inside before the doors closed. Surprisingly, inside it was quite dry, with the water staying outside even when the doors were open.

Casting a spell to dry himself and remove the water he'd left on the floor, as well as turn his flippers back into shoes and removing his gills, he quickly hurried through the tower, finding an empty room and ducking into it.

Well, Harry thought, I'm here. Time to start investigating.

He tapped his wand to his wetsuit and did what he'd been waiting to do since he'd first created it.

He pulled down the zipper he'd created, slid out of it, and revealed his crisp white tuxedo.

"I'm just getting started and I already feel like James Bond," He smiled. "So far, so good."

Making sure his invisibility cloak covered him completely, he vanished the wetsuit and snuck back into the hall.

For a magical silver tower under the sea, it was…unremarkable. The hallway was a normal hallway, without any decorations of any kind. The walls were smooth and flat, without any windows of any kind. The ceiling was high, but everyone that lived there was a giant, so it made sense. He tried another door and found that it was unlocked, too.

He took a glance into all the different rooms, just in case someone was stupid enough to leave anything incriminating unguarded. Most of the doors were unlocked, though, and held nothing of particular interest. He shifted through what he guessed was a living room, several bedrooms, a large room that's outer wall was completely see through, several rooms that didn't appear to have any specific purpose, and a kitchen. While he was in the kitchen, he shifted through the stores of food. He knew from experience that you could tell a lot about someone by what they ate.

But he didn't find any bags full of blood or human body parts—or not any he immediately recognized as such, at least. There were meats being stored, using the coldness of the ocean depths as a pseudo-refrigerator. But he also found lots of fish, with some fruits and vegetables here and there.

One thing he did notice was that there was a lot of food. Far, far more then would be needed to feed the five Giants, unless they had to eat their own weight every day or something. While possible, he was experienced enough to assume the more troublesome possibility.

If they need this much food, then it was probably because they had a lot of mouths to feed.

Leaving the kitchen, he looked for a way up the tower, finding it in a room that was cut off by a circular column of water that entered through the ceiling and disappeared through the floor, yet not getting anything outside its boundaries wet. Pursing his lips, he chose to just use a Bubblehead Charm and spell his clothes to stay dry this time, before passing through the surface of the water.

And then he paused, looking up and then down. Indeed, the water led both up and down, but where was he more likely to find something?

Probably the basement, he thought, and if not, he could just try one of the upper floors. He didn't have the slightest clue how they turned those animals into those things outside, but it would require a lot of room just to store all of them. He wasn't sure a single floor would be large enough and he'd seen the tower from the outside, so he knew it didn't get any bigger further up. That in mind, he swam down to the basement.

Or rather, the first basement. After he went down a floor, he found that the column went even further down, but he decided to check out the first basement first. Naturally, the door was locked, but a quick spell fixed that and he entered to find…pretty much exactly what he'd expected too. Hundreds of small creatures in bubble-like cages lined the walls from floor to ceiling. Harry noticed that he couldn't see any of the larger animals here, just small creatures like rabbits, birds, and rodents.

In that case, he had a good idea what was on the lower levels.

The animals began to make noise as soon as they saw him and their fear was obvious. Harry was reminded of the animal and magical creature abuse cases he'd sometimes worked, but only the really extreme ones made it to the Aurors or the ones involving really dangerous creatures. Still, he made a note to come back for them after he finished investigating, before leaving the room and travelling further down the tower.

While all the small creatures had fit into one floor, the larger ones had required much more space. The next two floors had been needed to house larger creatures and the truly large animals like horses, deer, and what he thought might have been some kind of tigers had needed at least another two—he didn't know yet, because there were _still_ more basements to examine.

Harry shook his head as he travelled even deeper down. In his world, the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures would have had a field day with all the laws broken here, but he honestly wasn't sure what to do. He couldn't really put them in prison without, well, a prison or Justice System to support him, and things were further complicated by the fact that the entire city seemed to, if not support this act, at least tolerate it with full knowledge of it. He'd already decided to save the animals, though he was still working out how to do so, but that wouldn't really stop the main problem—they could just get more animals. He wasn't really sure what to do in this case; he couldn't kill an entire city over this, even if it did disgust him, but he couldn't in good conscious let this continue, either.

He decided to finish investigating before making any decisions and unlocked the door of the sixth basement level, and was again greeted by a series of frightened cries. But this time, they sounded different.

This time they sounded human.

Harry stopped for a moment, blinking twice. Then he marched into the room, frowning severely.

Of course they sounded human; they'd come from humans. The sixth level, like all the others, was full of bubble cages, but each of them held a person. Age and gender didn't seem to make a difference—there were old people and children, men and women. Each was trapped in their own little cage and each trembled in fear.

Taking a deep breath, he tried to go over the situation calmly. This had just upgraded from mass animal abduction and abuse to mass human kidnapping, experimentation, and possibly slavery.

On one hand, that made things even more complicated.

On the other, it made them a lot simpler, too.

As an Auror, the protection of innocent people was his first priority.

Even if it meant going to extreme lengths to do so.


	9. Down to the Bottom

**The Master of Death**

**Down to the Bottom**

Harry immediately moved over to one of the cages, which contained a young, scared looking woman who was looking around frantically, as if trying to find something. It took him a moment to realize that she couldn't see him due to his cloak and an uncomfortable feeling settled into his stomach as he realized that their terrified response was caused by the mere opening of the door.

He gestured towards the door, locking it magically and, after a moment of thought, cast a silencing charm on it as well, just in case anyone should come near. Then he slid out of his cloak and knelt beside the young woman's bubble. She immediately flinched away from him as he suddenly appeared before her, whimpering. From several other bubbles, several others started screaming at him, including an older looking man and woman that may have been her parents.

Harry waited for a minute, hoping they would settle down once they realized he wasn't a giant, but they didn't. Without knowing their language, he couldn't calm them except with magic, and controlling this many people that way while also trying to get them to safety could easily get complicated.

But now that he had a group of normal humans, perhaps he could get rid of that weakness.

Slowly extending a hand, he clicked his fingernails against the hard surface of the bubble, before dragging them up. The girl's fearful eyes followed his fingers, until she'd unknowingly lifted them high enough to make eye contact—

And then he was in her mind.

A long time ago, Snape had derided him for simplifying Legilimency into something as simplistic as mind reading and had told him the mind was a complex and many-layered thing. It had taken him a long time to really understand what he'd meant—but he _had_ learned, from experiences and mistakes.

And now, knowing what he had learned, he was forced to agree with Snape.

With his decades of experience, it was a simple matter for him to invade the layer of the mind responsible for conscious thought, allowing him to effectively 'read minds,' but the mind was so much more than that. Voldemort had sent him amazingly detailed dreams by feeding to the parts of his mind that were responsible for his dreams, and at the Ministry he'd almost completely taken over his body by assuming control over his voluntary muscles.

And yet, even that was not the limit of what you could do with the mind.

Harry sank into her mind, past the layers of her conscious, into the depths of her long-term memories. He slid past her procedural memories and dove into her declarative ones, finding where her episodic memories stopped and her semantic memories began, before entering the latter.

And there it was—exactly what he'd been looking for. Factual knowledge, independent of personal experience; how to make food, address elders with respect, the role of a woman in a household and on a ship, and many other things were stored there, but he flicked through them with barely a glance to get what he truly wanted. Her lexical knowledge—how to speak her language, how to form meaningless sounds to create defined words, and more than that, how to say the words, what tone to use, and all the many things that turned words in the dictionary into written and spoken sentences.

Having taken what he'd needed, he retreated from her mind. He wasn't sure how long he'd taken, but the people in the room had only grown louder. The girl hadn't even noticed what he'd done—or perhaps she had, but simply hadn't understood the feeling.

It didn't matter.

"Have they hurt you, child?" He asked, giving her another look over. She didn't have any obvious injuries, but things could be done that didn't leave a mark. The fact that they'd taken her clothing could have meant such a thing, but at the same time, everyone else had been stripped as well.

The girl looked at him strangely for a minute before her eyes widened as she apparently realized that he was in fact talking to her. The noise in the room quickly began to change, as the men and women close enough to hear his words began to spread them.

It didn't quiet, though; in fact, it got louder.

"He can…Is he…?" A man began hopefully.

"Quiet Caomh!" An older man snarled. "It's probably just another of their filthy tricks!"

"And what reason do they have to trick us?" A woman asked. "Eogan, they already have us. We're trapped in their cages with no way out. Why trick us now?"

"She's right," Another man said. "Why bother now? I for one wish to hear what the old man has to say."

Eogan snapped his head towards the new speaker, face outraged.

"Are you saying we should trust him, Ninian? We don't know who he is or where he's from! Who knows what could happen!"

"Yes," A strong looking man spoke and Harry recognized him as the older man who had shouted at him when he'd appeared before the girl; her father, perhaps, or maybe even a husband. "Who knows? We could end up captured and put into bubbles, forced to wait while monsters take us away one by one. Eogan, be quiet. I, too, would like to hear the newcomer speak—regardless of how he got here. Speak to him, Boudicca."

The girl, Boudicca, started at the sound of her name, but still took a few seconds to respond.

"I…" Her eyes darted around uncertainly. "Am in a cage?"

Harry sighed and then offered her a kind smile.

"Yes," He said. "I suppose there's a limit to how well you can be while you're held captive under the sea."

He stood then, raising his wand.

"Do not worry, though; I'm here now, which means you're safe," He said matter-of-factly, swishing his wand, causing the bubble around her to vanish into thin air. "All of you. And while I'm at it, I'm going to kill the ones who put you here so they'll never do this to you again. It's pleasure to meet you all, by the way."

The resulting outburst—cheers, really—was instantaneous and deafening, and Harry was thankful he'd put up that silencing charm. He let them cheer, though; after being held captive for so long, it was good that they had been able to hold onto hope.

Harry gestured towards Boudecca, clothing her with a spell before moving onto the next bubble. One by one, he freed and clothed the captured men and woman, causing amazing gasps and murmurs, but they seemed to accept magic fairly easily—being kidnapped by underwater giants probably helped with that.

He stood before Eogan's bubble and dissolved it, smiling at him.

"Do you think I can be trusted, Eogan?" He asked, smiling, conjuring the clothing a brief foray into the man's mind had revealed to be his normal wear.

Eogan scowled, before glancing towards a young boy and girl he'd already freed, and nodded sharply.

"If you can get us out of here, I suppose it doesn't matter who you are." He said. Of course, that wasn't really what he said—but it was what he meant. Harry just silently translated the words and the emotions and intentions Eogan's mind revealed to be behind them into phrases that were easier to understand then a direct translation.

Harry just smiled again, continuing to free them, watching silently as families reunited. He let them all have a moment, watching them quietly. After what they'd gone through, they deserved at least a few moments of happiness before he had to ruin it.

He slid over to the man he'd confirmed was Boudecca's father, clasping him on the shoulder.

"The tower we're in—it goes further down," He said. "There are several floors full of animals above us, but there are floors beneath this one, too. Are any of your people missing?"

The man glanced towards him, but then followed his gaze towards the joyful families and seemed to understand.

"Many of us have been taken," He said grimly. "My brothers. Nuallan, too, and Suibhne, plus their families. But all of us were in here together before they started taking them away."

Harry pursed his lips severely, nodding. He wondered when the sadness of what they had already lost would start setting into the people.

"There might be more people beneath us, then," He told the man. "I have to go check for myself. I can't leave anyone behind."

Boudecca's father nodded.

"Everyone!" Harry said, raising his voice. In an instant, everyone went silent; apparently, freeing them all had earned him some authority. "I'm sorry to be the bearer of badness, but we aren't safe yet. We still have to escape the rest of the tower, and to do that we'll likely have to fight."

A wave of almost palpable nervousness spread through the room. Harry couldn't blame them for that; their last encounter with the giants had ended up with all of them captured. He held his hand up for silence, however, stopping any fearful responses before they could begin.

"I know you're all afraid, but don't worry," He told them. "This won't be like last time. This time, you have me on your side and that means this time you're going to win."

Harry had no real way of guaranteeing that against an entire city of enemies with unknown power, but he'd learned long ago that an important part of inspirational speeches was not mentioning all the horrible ways things could go wrong. So instead, he gestured with his wand, conjuring a miniature model of the interior of the silver tower as he'd seen it so far, as well as a series of large, blocky layers to indicate the basements. The first six basements were clearly defined, but everything beneath that was solid black. He also made a model of the boat that had brought him here, positioned just outside.

He tapped the sixth basement layer.

"This is where we are now," He said. "The levels above are full of wild animals. To get out, we're going to head towards that boat and crush anything and anyone that gets in our way. However, there are floors below this one, possibly ones filled with other people who have been captured. I'm going to go down to the very bottom and free everyone I can find. I'll bring up everyone I can find and we'll all work together to escape. We'll march out as an army, if we have too."

"And what do we do?" Eogan said.

"For now, I need you all to stay in here. Someone will probably notice if we make a break for it, so I need you to wait until I'm done. I'm going to free each room and have them stay where they are until I've freed everyone. Then, once I've freed them all, I'll open all the doors and we'll get out of here quickly. That should give the giants less time to respond and call for help. Does everyone understand? Can you all agree to wait a little while before leaving this room?"

There were murmurs of agreement. As much as Harry was sure they all wanted to leave, they all seemed to agree that fighting the giants with a lot of people helping them would be a lot better than trying to fight them all alone.

"But what of us?" Eogan asked, but not fearfully. His brow was furrowed but he seemed to honestly be awaiting the answers. "What do we do if the giants come before you're done? And how are we supposed to fight them when we escape?"

Harry glanced over the men and woman gathered before him. A part of him hoped he'd be able to do all the dangerous stuff himself, but the practical part of him had already accepted the fact that that might not be possible and was prepared for things to go wrong.

"I will not force anyone into battle that does not wish to fight, but anyone who does, for their freedom or their families, step forward." He said, face serious. "And I will give you a way to fight the giants."

For a moment, they all glanced and spoke amongst themselves, but then most of the men stepped forward with various degrees of confidence, ranging from 'not much' to 'very little.'

Harry twisted his wand and raised it sharply into the air before slowly dragging it in an arc above the heads of the men.

And then solid, heavy plates of steel twisted themselves into existence, cladding them one by one. In ten thousand years, it would have been an archaic defense, but here, in the Stone Age, steel was something that wouldn't be discovered for thousands of years. It was harder than anything the men had ever encountered and, with a quick series of Lightening Charms, it weighed no more than the clothes on their backs. Swords, hammers, maces, and axes all formed by their sides, also lightened. Harry thought about making guns, but he was wary of putting them in the hands of a bunch of people who'd never used them and who may start to panic—in the cramped confines of the hallways, they would probably do more damage to each other then the giants.

They'd just have to make do with weapons that were thousands of years ahead of their time and the power of a wizard. And he could always make them later, if he got really desperate.

"With these, it should be a bit more of a fair fight," Harry said. "Now wait for me in here and guard the door. I've used magic to make sure that no sound will leave this room—if any of the giants enter, kill them quickly, before they can get outside and warn the others."

The freed men and women were marveling at the weapons he created, speaking of them in awed tones, but he saw several of the men nod at his orders. Eogan and Boudicca's father moved to stand near the door, where they could easily attack anyone who entered.

Harry nodded back at them and moved towards the door.

"I'll be back soon." Harry said, leaving the room.

He glanced towards the water pillar, taking a deep breath.

One floor down, who knows how many to go.

**XxXXxX**

'_How many people have these giants captured?'_ Harry thought angrily. He'd freed four entire floors full of people, all of them of different nationalities. He'd told each group of the others he'd encountered and convinced them all to work together, but none of them seemed to have any prior knowledge of each other.

And he just couldn't figure out why. After seeing the warped creatures outside the city, he thought he had a good idea as to _what_ they were doing to the people they captured, but why were they doing this? He couldn't pass it off as something random; not after seeing all this. Nine floors and counting of specially prepared rooms for containment, all of them full and with species coming from wildly different areas?

This had definitely been planned, which meant it had some kind of purpose behind it. He'd thought it might be slavery, and maybe it was, but if so, what were they making them do?

He shook his head, lifting a hand to rub at his temples as he slide further down into the depths of the tower.

All those people that had been captured…if this was as organized as it looked, he couldn't ignore the possibility that this had been going on for a long time. He hadn't seen any warped people, but those animals outside the city must have come from somewhere and there had been at least several thousand, and that was just what he'd see. If they'd been capturing animals for that long, they might have taken people before, too. How many times had these floors been filled and emptied?

He had no way of knowing, but just thinking about it pissed him off.

Harry was startled from his thoughts by what he saw in the tenth basement.

Unlike the other nine floors, the tenth was a large sphere, maybe twenty meters in diameter. The sides of the sphere were perfectly smooth and the only way out was through the water pillar. There were no doors or walls; nothing to hide behind or climb up. Anything that wanted to get out of this room would need to be able to breathe water and swim straight up.

Looking around, Harry figured that was probably the idea.

In all the floors above, the people and animals held captive had been held in bubble-like cages, but had been otherwise unharmed. There hadn't even been guards posted, though most likely because anyone who wanted to escape would have still needed to break out of their cage, pound down the door, and then make it up the pillar. Nonetheless, Harry would acknowledge that, regardless of how horrible their intentions and actions may have been, the giants had at least been practical enough to not harm any of the people they'd captured, if only because they were probably more useful healthy then they were alive.

But on the tenth basement of the silver tower, that wasn't the case at all.

Halting his vertical motion by 'flying' in the water, Harry shut away his emotions and his immediate desire to act. Reacting quickly wasn't the same as reacting well and with all these giants present it could get someone hurt very badly. Instead, he took a long moment to look at the situation and think about what he should do.

There were two guards present for every captive and the room was obviously much bigger than any of the others, so it stood to reason that these captives were more important than any on the upper floors, for whatever reason.

At the same time, however, they weren't being treated nearly as well.

Harry looked around in muted disgust. There were a number of strange looking devices positioned throughout the room, looking like the horrible offspring of medieval torture machines and some kind of coral. The vast majority of them had someone hooked up to them and in a great deal of pain. Even with his feelings locked away, Harry was still able to feel distaste for the act, from a practical standpoint; if they were trying to gather information, there were much more effective ways than torture, which is why he didn't enjoy using it.

He paused for a moment, considering that.

_Were_ they trying to gather information? Or were they just causing pain? If they were trying to do the former, they weren't doing a very good job of it. In fact, the people in charge of the devices didn't seem to be asking any questions, which made the latter more likely, but didn't address the question of why. As far as he could tell, it was causing pain just for the sake of causing pain, which was something he just didn't understand.

Not understand it, however, didn't mean he was unfamiliar with it. He'd seen dozens—hundreds—of dark wizards exploiting and harming others for their own enjoyment, and he couldn't understand it any better now then he'd understood it with the Death Eaters. He wasn't a saint and in order to protect innocent people, he'd done things he wasn't proud of, but it had always had a point and he'd never let himself go too far. He'd never hurt someone solely for the sake of hurting them. What these captors were doing was something that disgusted him, no matter how many times he saw it.

Righteous anger attempted to rise up, but he fiercely squashed it back down with practiced skill. Learning Occlumency had been hard for him, since he'd always worn his heart on his sleeve, but he'd learned it, because he'd had too. Acting on impulse and letting your emotions show was something he hadn't been able to afford to do.

So instead of lashing out like he wanted too, he waited for several moments, taking calming breaths and clearing his mind. Then, when he was sure he was in control, he went back to observing the scene.

His anger and disgust had unconsciously caused him to focus on the machines and the act of torture, rather than the people involved. Doing so, it took him only a moment to realize what made this level so different.

The captives on this level weren't human. Instead, there were inhumanly beautiful beings huddled in pain and fear, creatures out of fairytales and nightmares crying out in pain, strange beasts whimpering like kicked dogs, and fantastic monsters that looked to be afraid of the dark; in the lowest depths of the tower was a menagerie of abused magical beings.

The torturers themselves were a bunch of humanlike giants. Harry swept his gaze over them before frowning, feeling like he'd missed something important. But even after a few moments of staring, he couldn't figure out was; they were definitely giants. They each stood taller than any normal human, hovering around eight feet. Beneath their clothes, their bodies looked nearly…twisted. Their muscle distribution was random and extremely disproportionate and gills stood out on their necks. He thought he might have seen something shell-like, but most of their bodies were covered. Other than that, there was nothing that particularly stood out about them. If someone looked only at their faces, they might have thought—

Harry froze, realizing what he'd missed.

The giants had all been strange looking. Some had looked freakish and monstrous and some had looked unearthly and beautiful, but none of them could have passed for _normal_.

And yet, the faces of the giants below looked…plain. Human. That was why he hadn't noticed anything odd about them; their faces weren't particularly remarkable in anyway—which was what he _should_ have found odd. They weren't particularly hideous or beautiful; whereas the giants had stood out, these ones could have just blended into a crowd, if not for the monstrous aspects. They wouldn't have been at all out of place with the groups upstairs, if they'd had human bodies.

In fact, they would have blended in perfectly, down to their very skin color.

As he felt his hands curl into fists, Harry had a feeling that he might have stumbled upon the people that had been taken.

He stood still for a long moment, processing that and considering the implications.

He'd been right to wait and observe. If those were really captured humans, then he couldn't simply go in guns blazing. They were just innocent people that had been warped and twisted by monsters; even if what they were being forced to do was horrible, he couldn't just kill them.

But he did have to stop them. Even if they were being forced to do this against their will, he couldn't let them continue hurting innocent people and he'd like to think that the people beneath the giants alterations wouldn't want some puppeteers making them do this either.

That was okay; those two goals weren't mutually exclusive. They just made things a bit more complicated. He needed to do something about the creatures being tortured before their captors had time to gain their bearings and act intelligently and start using hostages. Which meant that keeping them from using the captives against him was his first priority.

He glanced around, locating everything that could give him an advantage. The walls were smooth and featureless, but in the middle of the sphere hung several dozen floating crystals that served as lights. Many different colors of what he assumed to be blood had coated the walls, along with torn clothing and all the disgusting products of keeping a group captive in an area for an extended period of time.

It was disgusting—but for someone skilled in Transfiguration, it was useful all the same.

Thinking for a moment, he nodded to himself and raised his wand.

All at once the lights went out.

With his Night Vision Charm still active, he could still see perfectly in the sudden darkness, so he could see the human-giants react. Even caught by surprise, they reacted with inhuman swiftness; but as he'd said before, reacting quickly was not the same as reacting well.

They spun, immediately assuming a defensive position in expectation of an attack, rather than trying to use the hostages they had at their disposal. It wasn't until a few moments later, after not being attack, that they realized they weren't the targets at all.

And by then it was already too late.

One of them said something he couldn't understand in a voice that could have been a human's, if there had been any infliction or emotion in it whatsoever, causing the others to shift into a strange formation. One brought out another of those glowing crystals and tossed it up into the air, where it hung suspended on its own. The single crystal wasn't enough to properly illuminate the entire room, but reduced the darkness to a dim veil.

The humans-turned-giants looked around cautiously, trying to find the one who had shut off the lights, but Harry just floated silently and invisibly above them, casting spells. In trying to find their enemy, it took the former men a moment to realize what was wrong.

The torture machines that had bound the inhuman creatures had changed, becoming copies of the bubbles that bound the people and animals on the levels above—if those bubbles had crystalline spider legs. The 'spiders' had climbed the smooth walls of the sphere, taking them out of reach of the human giants.

One of the giants shouted, lifting a spear that looked like it might have been grown from some kind of giant sea urchin and not wanting to take any chances, Harry turned into a snake in his hands, expecting him to be surprised and try to throw it away.

He didn't.

Instead, the man-giant grabbed the snake by its head and snapped its neck, his blank expression unchanging, and reached for another spear.

Harry hit him with a stunner from less than a meter away and Apparated to the opposite side of the giants to avoid a response, trying not to worry about that emotionless reaction.

The giants lashed out around themselves without a second thought, naturally failing to hit anything. The giant that had shouted orders before, whom he assumed to be the leader, tried to start giving orders, but Harry drowned out his voice by twirling his wand and summoning a painfully loud shrieking noise, before snapping it sharply to the side and shattering the dim light high above his head.

As he'd hoped, the giants had quickly become focused on hunting him down. Assured that he wouldn't need to worry about them trying to hurt the captives for at least few moments longer, he Apparated again, appearing in the midst of the giants, silent and invisible. He raised his wand and then he lowered it like he was sweeping down an ax.

There was a silver streak of light that flashed around him, accompanied by a sound like a gunshot and minute tremors that vibrated through the floor. As quickly as it had come, the light faded. Several giants shouted, one of the creatures high above him let loose a deafening screech that was even louder than the one he'd created, and hard crystal shells shook as several creatures tried to escape their bubbles—even as another silver flash went off. For a few seconds, there were the frantic movements of scuffling footsteps, followed by something large and heavy hitting the ground.

And then it was over.

With a gesture, he hushed the reverberating scream he'd conjured, before creating a bright white light that lit up the entire room all on its own. The giant's spears twisted suddenly, writhing and becoming heavy steel chains that wrapped themselves around the unconscious giants.

Satisfied, Harry glanced upwards, where his crystal spiders had gathers on the ceiling, and winced in pain. Leaving the ground with a thought, he slowly floated upwards, towards the still shrieking woman in one of the spheres.

Her voice was quite literally painfully loud, even through the thick, muting shell he'd created around the captives, and he had to quickly put a Silencing Charm on his ears to keep them from bleeding. Three meters from the ceiling, he turned himself upside-down, before moving the rest of the way up and pressing his feet against the ceiling.

The screaming girl had long black hair and some of the palest skin he had ever seen; she probably would have been quite beautiful, if not for her shredded, bloodstained cloths and the wounds on her skin. There were several cuts around her mouth, presumably from the torture machine that must have been tailored too her. As she continued to scream, cracks began to form in the shell around her, making Harry wince slightly. That cage was a good six inches thick and it was cracking like glass.

He drew away his cloak so she could see him, which caused her to flinch away in her sphere and scream even louder. Due to his Silencing Charm, he couldn't hear her, but he could literally feel the sound she was creating.

He gestured sharply, silencing the bubble around her and repairing it before it could fully shatter and sent her falling to the floor. Then, he lifted a hand to his lips.

It took a nearly a minute, but with his Silencing Charm keeping her voice from breaking the glass, she eventually went silent and tears started to form in her eyes. That made Harry wince, too, and he quickly dispelled the Charm, before knocking on the bubble.

"Don't cry," He said, raising his voice so she'd hear him through the thick sphere. After all, _he_ didn't have a voice that could literally break glass. "I'm here to save you."

Her eyes widened at that, apparently stunned.

"…Really?" She asked hopefully, moving in her sphere to stand on the top of the bubble so that from Harry's point of view, she was standing upside-down.

"Really," He confirmed with a smile. Raising his wand, he pointed it at her and cast a silent Vulnera Sanetur. Her wounds immediately began to heal, making him smile wider, once again glad that he'd learned healing magic. After they had finished closing, he cleaned and repaired her clothes. "What is your name, my dear?"

"I am called Beansidhe," She replied.

Harry coughed delicately, somewhat amused. That would explain her voice, he supposed.

"Well," He said. "Do not worry, Beansidhe. You are all safe, now that I'm here. I promise I'll get you all out of here—and I'll make the ones who did this to you pay. But can you hold on for minute, my dear? I'll release in just a moment, I assure you, but I need to have a quick chat with the men down below. After I heal your friends, of course."

"Ah…" She glanced down at the former humans on the floor, anger burning in her eyes. "Please; take as long as you need."

"Thank you for your patience," He said, still smiling. "Hopeful, this won't take long. It would be unbecoming of me to make a woman wait."

After healing the last of the creatures on the ceiling, Harry let gravity find its hold upon him once more and allowed himself to fall back towards the floor. Slowing his descent ten meters before he hit it and then gently lowering himself the rest of the way, he landed quietly in front of the unconscious leader. As a precaution, he conjured another set of chains around him, put him in a Leg-Locker, and then woke him.

The former human's eyes snapped open immediately and he tried to rise. When he found that he couldn't move, his eyes quickly sought out the source. After dully staring at his chains for a moment, he lifted his head to look at Harry, deep lines of anger setting into his face.

"Hello," Harry said, lifting his hands to show that he didn't mean any harm. "I was hoping you might be willing to answer a few of my questions. Perhaps I'll be able to help you—"

Harry cut himself off, eyes widening in shock. As soon as he'd said the word 'questions,' blood had begun to leak from the corners of the giant's mouth.

It took him a moment to realize what had happened. With even a moment of hesitation, the giant had bitten off his own tongue. Realizing he'd been bound and was being questioned, he'd removed his own tongue so nothing could be tortured out of him.

Harry snapped his wand up, forcing the man's mouth open with a spell, in too much of a hurry to even bother trying to be gentle. The giant tried to force his jaw closed, tearing the skin of his lips in the futile struggle, while Harry focused completely healing him. He quickly reattached the bitten off portion of the tongue before transfiguring the blood into a gag to keep the man from trying that again.

After he finished, the bound man just glared at him, enraged that he'd denied his attempted silence. Harry took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly, more worried about what that meant then happy that he'd saved the man's life.

He'd really bitten off his own tongue. Without any fear or hesitance, he'd tried to tear it off rather than even _speak_ to his captive. That…was not a good sign. Generally, only the truly devoted or fanatical would go that far rather than risk giving away any information; most would at least consider surviving long enough to escape or be rescued.

But the giant hadn't.

And that said horrible things about the state of his mind.

Harry had been aware that there had probably been some degree of mind control involved when he'd seen the man-giants torturing people without any supervision. He'd suspected it, even before then; the animals and humans that had been captured and mutated so horribly probably wouldn't serve the giants willing. He'd figured there would have had to be some control mechanism involved that kept them under control, whether it was magical in nature or simply holding their loved ones hostage.

But a small part of him had clung to the hope that it had been the latter—that he could just save the day by freeing everyone. He couldn't say it had been a particularly strong hope; most of the mutated creatures he'd seen had been animals that probably wouldn't have been able to understand the concept of hostages.

But he had hoped nonetheless.

Harry shook his head.

"What have they done to you?" He murmured, kneeling down before the man. He lifted his hands to the man's temples and stared into his eyes, holding fast as the man tried to struggle out of his grasp. "…I don't know your name or if you can hear me, but…I'm going to try to help."

Slipping into his mind was so easy it was strange, but Harry needed only a glance at the contents to figure out why.

His mind had been mauled. Entire parts had been torn away, as if by a shark—something had sunk its teeth into his mind and torn away bloody, ragged chunks. It had not been a subtle, careful process, but a brutal assault that had pounded the man's mind into submission.

Passing into his mind was effortless because someone had already taken a battering ram to the gates.

What was inside was, if anything, in worse shape. Entire sections had been removed—but then they'd been replaced. Harry had a hard time navigating the man's mind, it had been so horribly warped; it was nothing at all like a normal human mind. There were sections that might have been human if they hadn't been wounded by the assault and tainted as they tried to fight against the spreading alterations and failed, falling prey to sickness and frailty. But other parts were something that wasn't and never had been human, which seemed almost surgically attached. It was a living, growing, spreading thing, stealing areas of the mind and dissolving them. It would continue to grow until there was nothing left that was human—and at this rate, that wouldn't be long. It was something that wasn't human and didn't want to be; it wouldn't understand what a human thought or felt or wanted and had no intention to even try. He could not say it was pure evil, so much that it had no grasp of morality whatsoever nor any ability to change; it would show him no more compassion then a disease or a storm, not because it hated him, but because it could only be what it was—and it was something that would enslave and spread until everything around it was like itself.

He thought about trying to dive into it, to see what lurked inside that patchwork frame, but he knew he couldn't. Legilimency was not only the art of entering the mind but of interpreting it correctly—but this mind wasn't like that of a human. It was like the sea, like the alteration of sound waves in water, and most of all, like green music backed by the sound of a storm.

Harry didn't even know where to begin with it. He had no choice but to stay within the parts of the mind that retained some form of humanity, between the sickening cancerous growths of a foreign mind. There was nothing he could do to help this man. If he had enough time, he might be able to carve away the implants, but it would do nothing to help him. After he removed everything that was wrong, there wouldn't be anything left that could constitute as a person.

And perhaps that was the point. The giants had sought to make a man into something inhuman and they had succeeded.

The person this man had been was never coming back—he had drowned down here at the bottom of the sea.


	10. Fight to the Surface

**The Master of Death**

**Fight to the Surface**

Harry slide quietly out of the remains of a dead man's mind and sagged upon himself as his corpse glared at him in hatred.

It was something he was painfully familiar with—the simple truth of the world was that, in the end, you couldn't save them all. Whenever one of his new Aurors had failed for the first time, he'd given them a speech about how it would get better with time, but it was a lie. It was a lie when he said it to them, just like it had been a lie when Kingsley had said it to him.

It hurt when you weren't good enough. When you weren't fast enough or smart enough. And you never were—at least, not all the time. Sometimes you can make it and other times you only find the bodies.

Even so, he couldn't let that affect him. There were times to grieve and mourn, but while you were trying to rescue hundreds of innocent people wasn't one of them.

This was why he'd learned Occlumency, after all, even though he'd had absolutely no natural skill with it. This is why he'd made it a standard part of the Auror curriculum during his time in office.

"I'm sorry," Harry said honestly, forcing himself to straighten. "There is nothing I can do to help you. And…if I just leave you here, they'll continue to use you like this, forcing you to kill and torture. They might even send you after the people you…the people you once cared about. So I'm sorry; that I was too late, that I couldn't help you, and because I have to do this. Goodbye."

Not wishing to warp the man's body any further than it already had been, Harry ended the man's life instantly and painlessly in a jet of green light. Without so much as a hair out of place, the man sagged forward, the life stolen from him. With his sense for magic, Harry felt the death sharply, but ignored it, lifting a hand to gently close the man's eyes.

"I hope you have no trouble finding your train," He murmured, already moving.

Not knowing how much, if any, time he had, Harry quickly moved among the former men, peering quickly into their minds, hoping they might be in better shape, that he might have a chance to save some of them.

They weren't and he didn't. He took each of their lives in flashes of green and closed their eyes, before shrinking all of them down, conjuring a small box, placing them inside, and slipped them into one of his pockets. At the very least, this way their families would be able to give them whatever funeral rites they saw fit.

Sighing slowly, Harry glanced above him, where his creations still hung on the ceiling. With a gesture, the spiders began to gather around the water pillar that pierced through the center of the room.

"We're leaving," He said as he raised himself into the air. He came to a halt near the spiders, beginning his explanation. "We're all getting out of here all at once. There are others on the floors above; I've already freed them and they're ready to fight. They'll be joining us as we rise."

Harry took a quick glance around. All of their wounds seemed to have healed, but that didn't change the fact that they had been tortured for an extended period of time. He doubted any of them had been particularly well feed, either.

He couldn't expect them to fight. Hell, he didn't want them to fight—even if he wasn't an official doctor, not letting someone that had been horribly injured and malnourished enter combat was just common sense.

"You'll bring up the rear, with the other non-combatants." He decided, gesturing at the spiders. One immediately stepped into the water, its eight crystal legs elongating and thickening around the orb that served as its body, until it was something vaguely resembling an octopus. It swam easily for a moment, allowing Harry to make sure there hadn't been any flaws in its design, before slowly sinking to the bottom of the pillar, tentacles gathered neatly beneath it. One by one, the other spiders shifted into octopi and began to stack themselves vertically atop one another, until all of them were in place.

Giving a nod of professional satisfaction, Harry entered the water himself, moving close to the top most sphere, which held Beansidhe inside.

"Don't worry," Harry said, shifting to Mermish to communicate underwater. "This won't take long."

Giving her a final nod, he began to ascend through the pillar once more. He made himself grow sets of gills with a tap of his wand; he was probably the only one who could properly communicate in the water and if anything went wrong, he wanted to be able to give orders.

Taking a moment to prepare himself, he tightened his grip around his wand. He double checked his plans, trying to make sure he hadn't missed anything—but if he hadn't, he couldn't think of it now, either.

This was it. The tension before a plan went into motion was always the hardest part, but it was just about to come to an end.

Getting everyone to safety was his first priority, but it wasn't the only one. After everything the giants had done, he wasn't going to let them off lightly; they were going to pay for the lives they'd warped—and for making him mad.

"Okay," He murmured. "Let's do this."

He lifted his wand, swept it once through the resistant water, and a purple light escaped from its tip, whizzing up the length of the pillar like a firework, smaller lights breaking off as it travelled up each level, before it finally disappeared right before reaching the ground floor. The smaller lights broke the surface of the water, leaping to the doors, their magic twisting into the stone and wood.

And as one, the doors swung open.

Harry swept up the pillar in a blur of motion, hardly even slowing down to create larger versions of the Crystal Octopi on the next five floors. When he reached the floor the large animals were held on, he slowed to a stop, knowing the men and woman on the floor below would need a while to respond. Moving quickly, he quickly found the largest animal's sphere and tapped it several times with his wand, causing a layer of white crystal to grow over it, abruptly quieting the hissing of the animal within it. A moment later, a horizontal slit opened on its surface, creating a makeshift mouth that opened wide as it grew animalistic arms and legs.

It immediately moved towards a nearby sphere, opened its mouth even more until it was wider then its body, and swallowed the sphere whole, along with the squawking animal inside.

"When you finish here, move onto the floors above," Harry said, already moving back towards the doors. "Meet me on the ground floor as quickly as possible."

The mobile container didn't even pause in its feast, sucking down sphere after sphere in short order. Harry wasn't worried; he'd put an Undetectable Extension Charm on it. There would be room enough for all the animals inside. They probably wouldn't be super happy about being eaten and transported, but they'd get over it.

Jumping back into the water, he landed atop the hard surface of one of his octopi as it began to rise, startling the warriors within until they noticed that it was him. They spoke to each other, quiet and breathless as he stood upright against the current, unbothered by the pressure. Harry couldn't hear them over the rushing of the water, but was too focused on the matter at hand to worry about it, either.

"Prepare yourselves," He said instead, his voice as beautiful and musical as it always was when he spoke Mermish. They hushed, as if entranced by the sound of his voice. "This is our stop."

Harry leapt from the animate crystal, stopping himself in midair before he hit the ground and levitating his way out of the room, gliding fearlessly around the corner.

The giant who had welcomed the hunters back before stared at him for a moment with startled eyes, before opening his mouth to say something. Harry didn't know whether he was going to call for help or shout at him and he never would, because a section of his chest the size of a dinner plate disappeared before he could say word.

On a human, it would have taken out his heart, as well as most of his lungs, but Harry had no idea what the anatomy of a giant was, so he made his head disappear, too, for good measure.

Or that's what he told himself. As the body quivered and fell, he acknowledged that it might just be because he was still a bit upset.

Flicking his wrist, he closed the gills on his neck before glancing back into the room at the crystal octopus that was serving as an elevator.

"Come on," He said. "We have work to do."

A section of it slid opened into a doorway and the nervous looking warriors quickly stepped out of it. The door closed behind them, before the Octopus scrambled clumsily from the pillar a moment before the next 'elevator' rose to take its place, filled with another group of warriors. Once all five groups had reached the surface, he spoke.

"Here's the plan. We all stick together—_no wandering off_." He emphasized that as he always did before a mission, not necessarily because he thought it would happen, but simply because it could get them killed if they did. They all quickly nodded beneath his glare and he continued. "We search this floor. If we find any giants here, we kill them. If any more giants appear, we kill them, too. If you see a giant, shout a warning to everyone else, too, and call for me. If you see more than one, don't attack by yourself; call for help. Any questions?"

They were silent.

"No? Good. We'll search room by room. They have food stored in their kitchens; after we're done with the giants; we'll get it ready for transport and take it with us. You can take anything else you find, as long as it's easy to carry." He glanced towards his octopi. "Go get the others, but stay down there until I call you. Everyone else, follow me."

Without waiting to see if they were following his orders, he strode back into the hall, stepping over the giant's corpse to reach the next door. Opening it quickly, he stayed behind the door as he peaked his wand in, ready to attack anything he found.

But it was as empty now as it had been before.

Closing the door again, he moved towards the next one, pausing when he noticed that the men had stopped behind him, gathering around the giant he'd killed. They whispered to each other over it.

Harry lifted an eyebrow at them and watched them quietly for a moment. They went silent again as they noticed his gaze.

"Done?" He asked, receiving embarrassed looks in reply. "Stay focused; there are plenty more where that one came from."

The next room was empty. And the one after that. And the one _after_ that. A part of Harry wondered if he was lucky enough for all of them to have already left and they'd all be able to just walk out of here, but he knew better then to drop his guard.

Pondering it for a minute, he realized something.

"They all just came back from a hunt," He whispered. "They're probably in the kitchen eating. Follow me."

He led them towards the kitchen and used a Supersensory Charm to listen at the door, before nodding and standing up straight. He lifted a hand towards the men behind them, gesturing them back.

And then he blew the door in.

"Hi," Harry said, smiling at the stunned giants inside. "Remember me?"

To their credit, the giant's reacted fast. The goat man immediately grasped the table they were eating at and lifted it, sending dishes and food clattering to the ground before throwing the table at him like it weighed no more than a baseball.

Harry stopped it before it reached him, halting its forward motion with a simple Impediment Jinx, before stepping up to stand atop it, lifting himself into the air in order to rise high enough to rise onto the giant's table. On top of it as he was, he stood even with the Goat in height.

Snarling, the taller of the two humanlike giants, a man with eyes the color of seaweed, rose from his seat, acrid green light gathering between his hands.

But the grey-eyed giant just pondered Harry and the men behind him, rising much more slowly. He lifted a hand to stay his underlings from attacking.

"In fact," He said, speaking in slow, amused tones. "We were just talking about you. But I must admit, I hadn't expected to see you again so soon. However, perhaps this is for the best; I had wished to speak with you about—"

The giant cut himself off, throwing himself out of the way of Harry's curse, which instead hit the wall and reduced a section of it to fine powder. The taller giant's snarled and he had to react quickly to block the sphere of acid that had been meant for his face.

"I know literally hundreds of languages," Harry said, transfiguring the acid into water and letting it splash harmlessly against him. He twitched his wand and all but one of the dishes on the ground sprang towards the giant's face. The giant stumbled back, startled by the unexpected form of attack, and that was more than long enough for the remaining dish, a huge plate that the Goat had been eating of off, to sprout eight legs and shifted into a massive, hairy spider. With a gesture, Harry threw it at the giant's face and the creature was so enormous that its thick legs wrapped all the way around his head and met in the back. "And I can't think of words in any of them that would properly express how little I care about what you have to say."

He was about to transfigure the spider into a helmet that was spiked on the inside when the Goat charged at him with an enraged roar. Snapping his wand down towards the table instead, it twisted and began to match the Goats charge, even as Harry's feet left its surface and he slid back through the air.

"Let's try this again…" Harry murmured as the table leapt to tackle the Goat, even as its form shifted, growing into a mass of strong, hard muscle, thick fur, and sharp claws and teeth. "Goat Man vs. Man Bear, round two. _Rip him to pieces_."

The enormous creature only snarled in response, but it was quick to try to obey. Where before its attacks had been glancing blows and light wounds meant to intimidate and drive back, now it sought only to kill. Its fangs sunk into the flesh of the goat's shoulder as its claws left bloody gashes in the giant's flesh and it tried to sink them deep and get a good hold with which to rip its prey apart. The Goat gave a scream in reply, not of pain or of fear, but of animalistic bloodlust, and its hand's quickly sought the Bear's throat.

With agility he would not have expected from someone with only one leg, the fourth giant was looming over him, swinging a cabinet that it had literally torn from the wall in a blow that would not so much kill him as give the walls around him a red paint job. Not even giving thought to attempting to match that power, Harry willed himself away, feeling himself being crushed into an impossibly small space before reappearing on the other side of the room, facing the giant's back with a curse on his lips—but before he could say a word, the giant began to scream.

One of the warriors—Eogan, Harry realized—had run up behind the giant and stabbed it in the back of the knee with a wordless cry. Without pausing or even taking a breath, Eogan tore his sword from the giant's flesh and began to furiously slash at it, opening deep wound and lacerations as he swung, not with control or skill, but with the simple raging passion of a man who wanted nothing more than the death of the thing in front of him.

As if Eogan's fury had broken the spell that had kept them in place, the other warriors rushed forth as one, joining him with their own wordless cries. They amassed around the giant as it fell, its one leg giving out, and they stabbed down at it again and again, pouring out their wrath upon it in stab after stab, screaming until it was impossible to distinguish the giant's cries from their own.

With a shout that Harry just barely heard over the screaming around him, the seaweed-eyed giant tore the spider off his face, ripping it body from its legs in the process. Throwing away the spiders now spasming body, the giant rushed at him without even pausing to brush the legs out of his hair.

Harry flickered out of the way of the first blob of acid, letting it splash uselessly against the wall behind him, before swatting the second away with a flick of his wrist. Standing firm before the giant's charge, he swung his wand in an arc, producing a whip fire that struck the giant across the chest. The giant gave no more than a hiss of pain, not slowing down in the slightest, even when the whip became a snake and lunged towards his throat.

Grabbing its head in one hand, the giant crushed it like it was no more than a paper cup and swept up something that had been leaning quietly against the wall, swinging it as he ran. As he swung it towards him, Harry saw what it was—a beautifully crafted sword, made out of some sort of coral.

"You're dead!" The giant shouted, spittle flying from his mouth.

But his sword passed through nothing but air.

Behind him, Harry swung his wand as if it was a sword as well—and its slash rent an arc of nonexistence, as if it were an invisible blade that erased anything in its path.

The giant's left arm fell off, then, cut several centimeters below the shoulder, before the rest of the giant's body fell, cut in two as everything that had been in the path of Harry's wand disappeared.

"No," Harry said flatly, swinging his wand once more to remove the giant's head. "You are."

Almost immediately, the men around him began to cheer, but Harry didn't join them. Narrowing his eyes, he confirmed what he suspected.

The grey-eyed giant had decided to cut his losses and run.

Narrowing his eyes, Harry thought quickly. It didn't take him much thought to realize where the giant was going and he Apparated a moment later, reappearing with his back to the magical curtain that kept out the sea.

Right in front of him stood the Giant, face startled as he quickly tried to turn his run into a backpedal away from the enemy that had suddenly appeared in his path.

"Going somewhere?" Harry asked flatly as he slashed his wand horizontally, releasing a wave of ghostly purple flames. The Giant, moving with more agility then he would have given something so large credit for, leapt completely out of the way of the flames, turning the leap into a cartwheel to return to his feet.

Frowning after him, Harry lifted his wand again. Slashing his wand vertically, gouges appeared on the ceiling and floor, but the giant had already realized how dangerous it was to be anywhere his wand was pointing and quickly slid out of the way before he was erased.

Harry saw the Giant's eyes dart around quickly, as if searching for a way out, before his eyes landed on something behind him and narrowed dangerously.

Harry swung his wand toward the giant's face, intending to relieve him of his head, but the Giant spat something in a hissing, guttural language and a tremendous force hit Harry in the back and knocked him to the floor.

Pressed to the floor by a rushing torrent of water, it took him a moment to organize his thoughts and realize what had happened. Somehow, with either a password or a spell, the Giant had turned off the curtain that was holding the water at bay and with nothing holding it back, the sea was quickly rushing in.

The giant ran towards him, either trying to get out of the building or attack him, and he Apparated out from under the rushing water. Reappearing several meters down the hallway in a vertical position, he couldn't help but stumbled as the rush of water hit his knees, throwing off the spell he cast.

Swallowing his annoyance, he tried to readjust his aim before the giant fled from sight, but in the water, the giant had the advantage of both three-dimensional movement and room to make use of it. The giant grabbed the upper edge of the doorway and pulled himself up out of sight before he could hit him.

Unable to repress a snarl, Harry Apparated—

Back into the kitchen.

As much as the mere thought of letting the giant get away pained him, killing him wasn't Harry's first priority, no matter how much he wanted to.

He was here to save the captives. Including the warriors who would drown if he left them alone while the water came rushing in.

Appearing amongst them as the water flooded in, he whipped his wand in a wide circle above his head—and a moment before the knee-deep water could reach them, it arced up, curving in mid-air to connect above their heads, and then hardened into a massive crystal orb that shielded the entire group.

"There's been a change of plans," Harry said. "We're getting out of here right now."

The tip off his wand lit up with a bright blue light, sending a silent signal to the transporters down below.

"I'll go on ahead to get our ride prepared." He continued. "The others will be coming up momentarily and then we're going to leave as quickly as possible. I'm going to break this thing into smaller crystals, so break up into groups."

Apparating out of the sphere, Harry gave them a moment to separate into smaller groups while he gave himself gills again.

"I've set your pods to follow me in just a minute. I have to make sure our ride is ready for us, first." Harry told them as the sphere broke into smaller sets of octopi. "I'll only be a minute."

Appearing outside, he quickly looked around, in hopes of finding the giant who'd escaped. He was nowhere to be seen, however, even after Harry Apparated a hundred meters straight up to look around. On the Brightside, none of the other giants flitting about the city seemed to be responding in alarm yet.

That almost surely wouldn't last. The giant that had escaped would probably be back soon, likely with a few dozen other giants at his back.

For a moment, Harry gave serious thought to waiting around for them. He could wait invisibly for them to come back and set up an ambush. If he had time to prepare, he could transfigure a number of helpers and then he could introduce those giants to some of the most horrific creatures of the sea.

He wanted too—he couldn't deny that. He wanted them to pay for the lives they'd stolen and ruined.

But that wasn't why he was here, was it?

He had people to save. Maybe he could return later, to keep them from hurting anyone else, but here and now he had to concentrate on saving lives. He'd been arrogant with Harry and Elaine and it had nearly cost him—it had been so long since he'd entered a battle he wasn't certain he'd win that he'd taken his victory for granted and assumed nothing could stop him. But he was in a new world now, with new rules, and while he powerful and he knew it, but he couldn't let himself assume his opponents didn't have any tricks of their own. He knew everything his magic could do, but he wasn't dealing with his type of magic any more.

Entering the giant's ship, he immediately focused on his first concern and began to make it bigger on the inside. It would need to be large enough to hold everyone and he made sure it was. Then he checked the ships controls, wincing as he didn't recognize them in the slightest. But then, he'd expected that—and even if he'd known how to steer it, it wouldn't have changed anything. He couldn't well steer it himself, when problems were almost guaranteed to arise outside of the ship. So he began weaving Charms, animating the ship's controls, readying it to steer itself.

With that done, he opened the ships doors, and saw the first of the transports and the towers doors. He gestured at them to come as he stepped through the 'curtain' around the ships entrance, re-entering the water once more.

"Hurry up," He said in Mermish. "We haven't got much time."

At once, the transports responded to their Master's will and flooded out of the tower. They entered the ship one by one, not getting in each other's way and for a moment, everything seemed to be going well.

And then, he heard it. A sound like something rushing through the water.

Or a _lot_ of something's.

Half-knowing what he would find, Harry gave the still boarding transports a glance before Apparating high above, expecting the worse.

He was not disappointed.

A dozen ships, larger and better armed than the one he'd stolen, swam towards them. Around them, hundreds of giants swam, clad in armor and baring spears and swords of coral in their hands. As they swam, more forces joined their ranks—and leagues behind them far off in the distance, more ships were gathering.

'How?' Harry wanted to ask. 'How did they get ready so quickly?'

It should have taken longer than this to get them all ready. Maybe even an hour or two, since they'd been caught by surprise. Harry had expected them to respond in force, but not like this—with his surprise attack, it shouldn't have been possible, from a logical point of view!

Yet, here it was. And who was he to speak of logic in the first place? He knew full well how illogical the world could get.

And in the end, how it had happened didn't matter. One way or another, their army had come for him.

He had to think fast; he started, as he always did, with a check of the current situation.

He was greatly outnumbered and none of the warriors he had with them would be of any use to him in the sea. Everyone he wanted to protect was on a small ship that was almost certainly slower than theirs and just as certainly much less armed. The sea was his enemies' domain and if he wanted the men and women he'd rescued to be truly safe, he'd need to take into account that he would have to, at the very least, get them completely out of the water.

He could do that, once he got to the surface and had a chance to work his magic. With his skill and the Elder Wand, a flying boat was completely possible.

But the surface was very, very far away, and getting there meant he'd probably have to go through most of an armada to do it.

Which meant he better not hold back.

With a wave of his wand, the clear water changed slightly in color. At this depth, it was hard to see them, even for him, but he'd conjured a swarm of Box Jellyfish as he retreated and ordered them quickly towards the oncoming swarm. He wasn't sure of the exact details of giant physiology, but he was pretty sure a bunch of poisonous Jellyfish would ruin their day.

Of course, if he ended up to close to them and accidentally brushed against one, it wouldn't do wonders for his day, either, so he magically ordered them to stay far away from him and put a respectable distance between himself and his creations before starting to enlarge them.

As he continued to retreat towards the boat, he began to conjure more and more creatures. He was careful not to send them to attack, knowing that it would be pointless if he got them too close to the Chironex he'd conjured.

Instead, he conjured them in waves and allowed them to spread throughout certain areas. A wall of tiny Blue-Ringed Octopi that he left the same size, before creating swaths of much larger and more dangerous looking creatures as the next line of defense. Sharks, Stingrays, and Sea Snakes may not generally attack unless provoked, but his control had them ready to kill.

Harry took a deep 'breath' through his gills as he lowered his wand for a moment to hitch a ride on a Great White Shark he'd made. He kept his eyes on the approaching giants as they ran into the first line of creations.

Almost immediately, horrible looking red markings spread quickly across the flesh of the foremost giants, as they tried to push roughly past the Boxes of Death and were promptly put in their place for their folly by thousands of microscopic poisonous darts. If they had been normal Jellyfish, pencil thick red lines would have appeared wherever their tentacles had touched.

His creations, naturally, inflicted wounds that were significantly larger than that, leaving agonizing, ropelike marks on the giants flesh.

With them close enough, Harry urged his creations to attack, rather than simply wait, and large tentacles began to brush against the giants in deceptively gentle strokes as the Boxes of Death floated forward. Panic was immediate as mere contact with the creatures caused horrific pain, and for a moment it seemed like they would break rank and scatter—

But a firm, but almost musical voice slid through the army, carrying smoothly through the water.

No…it was like it _coming_ from the water, speaking from the liquid all around them. The sea called out and demanded to be obeyed.

As one, the giants on the frontline moved back away from the Jellyfish and a series of other giants, wearing strange cloaks over shell-like armor, and strange light began to gather around them, before the water started to blur.

Harry looked away, knowing before they even cast their spell what would happen. As he reached the ship, he was pleased to see the last of the transports entering the ship. He had his shark pull up by the doorway.

"Are you the last one?" He asked.

A young boy with slightly tanned skin nodded back and said something that the water distorted. Harry nodded and gestured the doors of the ship shut, before sending a spell whizzing down into the tower to double check, just to be safe. If there was anyone else, he could quickly Apparate them up, but he didn't receive a reply.

Harry patted his shark's head and gave it a nod before Apparating up to stand atop the ship. As the shark rejoined its fellows, Harry looked around from his new vantage point, working his jaw.

The giants had annihilated all of his Jellyfish and were making quick work of the larger predators he'd created. He imagined they were still having trouble with the tiny octopi, but they seemed to be bearing the poisons that were running through their systems fairly well—at least in that no one had collapsed yet. It would take at least several minutes for major symptoms to appear, though, if they did at all.

That was fine. He hadn't really expected the aquatic giants to be unable to deal with the dangers of the sea. It sort of went with the territory, he figured. They were just there to buy time for everyone to board the ship and they had.

The ship lurched into motion beneath him, slowly beginning to rise, but Harry ignored it. With everyone safely aboard the ship, it was his turn.

Taking one last breath, he prepared himself for what he was about to do, lifting his wand like he was a maestro before an orchestra. He held it there, at rest as the first of the giants broke through, before he dropped it low and then brought it sharply up high, a gesture that demanded response.

The only warning was a roaring, bellowing noise, perfectly audible even beneath the sea.

And then the Fiendfyre leapt eagerly to its master's call and he set the sea aflame.


	11. The Flames That Marched Against the Sea

**The Master of Death**

**The Flames That Marched Against the Sea**

The fire bloomed up from the depths like smoke, unhindered by such petty concerns as being underwater. It boiled the water around it in an instant and large bubbles of scalding steam appeared around the flames as they rose quickly towards their prey.

It wasn't hard to make Fiendfyre kill. In fact, it was _too_ easy. In a way, the hellish flames had a mind of their own, if an alien and malicious one; it wanted nothing more than to devour anything that was not itself. The flames reached up from the deep like jealous, grasping claws, able to sense the life all around them. It could feel the power of their lives like they were sparks in the darkness. It wanted them; to take them and burn them away until they could not distract from the glory of its much greater brilliance.

And Harry wanted the same thing. He could feel them at the edge of his perception and he wanted to destroy them and everything else, until nothing but ash remained.

Such was the nature of Fiendfyre. It wasn't easily controlled like the creatures he'd conjured, or even easily understood like humans, but it was far too dangerous to leave unchained. Those who played with fire would inevitably find themselves burned—when it came to Fiendfyre, this was a horrible, dangerous fact. It sought life and if he let it go, it would delight in devouring him like would anything but itself.

But therein lay the one way to tame the flames—and the reason why it was considered one of the most dangerous forms of magic out there.

_It would not devour itself._

To control the flames, Harry became one with them, until they were but an extension of himself—or perhaps, until he was but an extension of them. They would obey nothing but their own twisted will, so he made that will his own.

And so the battle began. Not just between Harry and the Giants, but between his will and the flames. His will was a part of it, but unless it was the strongest part, it was a dissenting voice in a burning field of flawless unity. The flames would not permit such a thing anymore then they would permit any life; there could be only one voice and only one will.

If that will was his own, the flames would conform to his demands.

If it wasn't, the flames would hollow him out. Those flames could burn anything, even souls. What was a mind to them? They would consume him completely and he would be nothing but an extension of the whole, until they decided to consume him completely, until he was just another part of the fire.

Even now, it was trying to quash him. He could feel it, like a burning on his mind. He felt like he had a horrible fever and he knew from experience that it would only get worse with time, until he felt like he was burning alive. He could have used Occlumency and shut out the foreign influence in an instant, but he didn't. That wouldn't have let him control them. No; to do that, he would have to be a bit more subtle, at least at first.

The flames broke apart, twisting at first into orbs before becoming a massive school of piranhas seeking out their first target, and that was when Harry began. With a whispered thought, he suggested that the flames would spread more quickly if they attacked multiple targets at once. For a moment, there was a stirring in the flames, as if it were about to question itself, but it smoothed out almost before it began. It realized, in its way, that the suggestion would indeed spread the flames. The next flock of piranhas also broke apart, even without him suggesting anything, as his idea spread.

As the different groups began to reach the giants, he concentrated on one that was faltering, injured by the Jellyfish and Octopi. Through the flames, Harry could see him and the painful wounds upon his flesh. All around him, other giants fought with sudden fear against the unnatural flames and jets of water broke them apart, casting them into sparks that immediately began to reform.

Harry ignored them, focusing on the weakest member of the pack.

This one, he urged, drawing in some of the surrounding piranhas to assist those in charge of taking down his target. Kill this one first.

There was a moment of resistance, but it was small. It didn't really matter to the fire whether it killed one man or another, as long as it was killing something. The idea of purposely sparing someone for a time was a strange, foreign idea to it, but after minute of no success against the slowly uniting front of the giants, a small school of piranhas broke off to assist in attacking his chosen target.

The giant was weak. It had taken a particularly harsh beating from the Jellyfish and enough time had passed for the poison to start to take effect. It was attacking his nervous system, heart, and skin, all at the same time. Given how many times he'd been stung, he might even go into cardiac arrest soon.

In other words, he was easy pickings for the flames and they sunk into the horrified giant with wicked glee. He could feel their pleasure, then, at having something to burn. The frantic giant tried to pat out the flames, shaking from the venom and the pain. His movements were clumsy, though, and wouldn't have worked even if he hadn't been. The fire danced joyfully upon his flesh, spreading unnaturally slowly.

They knew their victim was suffering and they delighted in it. They wanted to burn him slowly, which was why the piranhas had gone after his hands and feet. The flames would crawl sluggishly up his limbs as he screamed and cried and begged, burning away inch by slow inch until they reach his body. They'd spread across him, then, and burn the rest of him alive. The flames could control how hot they were and they'd turn it down to burn him slowly. They'd burn his flesh, char his meat, and then gnaw on his bones in delight, but they'd make it take as long as possible. They wouldn't let him die until they'd had all the fun they could.

But Harry didn't kill like that, so he cast his will towards the flames burning the man alive and spoke to them, not with a quiet suggestion but with an order that must be obeyed. They fought him for a moment, but he moved quickly, targeting only the flames around the giant and leaving the rest to do as they pleased.

He crushed them and made them obey.

The flames flickered and the giant gasped as they heated quickly, spreading across his body in seconds. He screamed, his voice ragged and torn for a moment—and then he fell silent as the flames burnt his throat away. He struggle then, just for a moment, still trying to scream.

And then it was over.

The dark mind of the Fiendfyre raged immediately, outraged as if Harry had committed a crime by so swiftly ending a life, and the heat upon his mind abruptly increased. Harry gasped at the sudden flash of pain that streaked through his head, but tried to ignore it.

The Fiendfyre controlled most of the flames that now lit up the sea—but not all of them. A burning patch around the quickly burning remains of a giant answered to him, now. And that patch would grow quickly under his command, until their situations were reversed and he controlled more that the Fiendfyre and could take complete control.

For now, however, he had to focus. He drew upon an image and his will sculpted the flames under his command.

Others had been poisoned by his creations and were getting weaker by the minute. He'd pick them off one by one while the Fiendfyre raged at anything that it could find and he'd spread more quickly through the battlefield. With a shifting of light, a burning shark began to swim through the water, seeking its already dying prey. Harry focused on it completely—

Until a voice spoke to him, the voice of the sea.

"I see you, Firestarter," The leader of the Giants purred. "You made a mistake coming into my domain."

And suddenly the water stopped passed through his gills. Instead, it wound around his neck twice, pulled tight, and suddenly he couldn't breathe.

The part of his brain that still thought logically despite being strangled by the ocean itself knew that there were probably many ways to get out of such a simple problem—but when something enormously powerful closed around his throat with enough force to bruise, Harry didn't take time to ponder the best course of action.

He just reacted.

Reappearing twenty meters away, he took a reflexive, relieved breath and tightened his control on the Fiendfyre under his command. It had lapsed momentarily but he recovered quickly before the raging mind of the Fiendfyre could attempt to usurp his grasp.

And then the watery noose found its way around his throat again.

"You cannot run from me within my own kingdom," The voice whispered in his ear, sounding as nearby as always. "There is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide."

Harry opened his mouth to retort with something witty.

"Grrk," Was all that came out as the noose continued to tighten around his neck. At the rate the pressure was increasing, it would probably break his neck before he could do anything else.

Apparating again, this time farther away, he couldn't keep himself from raising his left hand to sore neck, rubbing it gently as he swallowed. Waiting slowly, he counted.

One…two…thr—

He Apparated again, not even waiting for the water to fully grasp his throat.

About two seconds, he thought with a frown. He glanced around quickly, looking for any of the giants that he thought stood out, but he couldn't find anyone that immediately drew his eyes. He snorted in annoyance before Apparating again, wincing as he reappeared and glancing towards the Fiendfyre.

That had been close. Apparating wasn't hard, per se, at least not after the amount of practice he'd had with it, but it did require one to be completely focused on reaching one's destination. Splinching was what happened if you Apparated with insufficient determination to reach your destination. Normally, that didn't matter, but even the briefest lapse in focus was dangerous while using Fiendfyre. The first few times he'd gotten away with it, because the Fiendfyre hadn't seen it coming—but apparently he wasn't the only one timing his jumps. That time it had struck almost exactly when his control had lapsed—almost.

If it had hit him half a second sooner…

He couldn't keep Apparating around. Two seconds wasn't enough time to do anything important, especially while fighting the giants, the Fiendfyre, and whoever was trying to choke the life out of him. At the very least he needed to get out of the reach of the latter, so that he could get rid of at least one of the other two.

He quickly flipped through his options before the water tightened around his neck again, followed by his arms and legs until he was held firmly in place. Apparently giving up on just choking him, the water tried to force its way up his nose and past his tightly closed lips.

Harry would have growled if he could.

There was no helping it.

He wasn't safe in the water.

He flickered out of existence and reappeared in the front of his stolen boat and had a fraction of a second to prepare himself before the Fiendfyre struck.

It wasn't enough. Maybe it would have been if he'd been using his Holly wand, but against the fires the Elder Wand had dragged up? It was a paper defense and was pierced in an instant. It was rather foolish of him not to have accounted for that.

Gasping in pain, he lifted his hand to his head, desperately trying to cover a wound that wasn't there. But he couldn't help it. It felt like someone had taken a pickaxe and swung it hard at his forehead. He tried to fight against it, but the burning pain spread in an instant, sinking into his mind like the thorned, twisted roots of some sort of horrible plant.

The Fiendfyre had the advantage and it had every intention of pressing it all the way to the deepest layers of his mind—and in that moment, as it tried to make him conform, he was closer to the Fiendfyre then he'd ever been before.

It was…hard to describe. It was like touching another mind but very different at the same time, with a side order of feeling intense heat on his mind. The Fiendfyre was almost overwhelming, now that he could really feel it and for a moment he felt daunted at having to face such a thing. It hurt too much to bring up his Occlumency barriers and he couldn't focus through the pain running through his mind. Even if he could, with the way it was already sinking deep into him, he wasn't certain he could fight it out of his mind. Put up false memories, perhaps, and mislead it, but since it only wanted to destroy his mind, it wouldn't care whether what it found was real or fake. And he wasn't sure if he could match his will against the sheer burning fury of the Fiendfyre; as it was, he could only pull his thoughts around himself and try to keep them safe—

He had an idea.

Through the pain, he felt that he knew the fire was trying to do to him. It was trying to make him conform to its will; hollow him out so it could pour itself inside. So he let a few falsified memories float to the top of his mind amidst several useless thoughts and waited as they were instantly devoured and replaced by the foreign, intrusive mind of the Fiendfyre as it tried to fill in the gaps it had made—and he struck as soon as it had.

As he'd done with the piranha's before, he slid his will forward, attacking when it didn't expect him to, and took control of the fire that had formed inside his mind. Focusing on it completely, he turned it against the flames at the edge of his thoughts, letting the fire grow into a wall by burning the fake thoughts and memories he quickly fed it. The two flames were like maddened beasts at first, but the simple surprise of what he'd done gave him the advantage and he stopped the Fiendfyre, for the moment, at the cusp of his mind.

And suddenly he had room to think. The Fiendfyre was still there; he could feel it circle around his mind, poking and prodding for weak points. His trick wouldn't work on it twice—it never did, at least not on the same batch of flames. If it had a chance, it would try to invade his mind again and it wouldn't make the same mistake; it would burn away everything before trying to replace him.

But he'd bought himself some time, at least. It was up to him to make sure the Fiendfyre didn't get another chance to erase him—which meant he had to end this.

"—ada!" One of the men nearby shouted as Harry stumbled to his feet. "Nuada, are you okay?"

Harry's brow furrowed when they called him that before relaxing as he understood. He'd never given them his name, had he?

'Protector'…Hopefully he could live up to that title.

"I'm fine," He said. "I just have a…headache."

He tried his best not to falter as he slid towards the window, but he couldn't keep himself from shaking at the close call and the adrenaline rushing through his veins. He looked out into the ocean, eyes searching. The Fiendfyre had been busy while he'd been distracted, and had spread rapidly through the ranks of the giants. The flames he'd brought under his command had been subsumed back into the flock as well.

He'd have to start over. But this time, he didn't have time for the 'safe' and subtle approach.

He focused, reaching out to the smallest spark in the sea. It wasn't large enough to be a piranha or even a snack for a piranha. But it was there and it was small enough to bring under his command.

He lifted his shaking wand and braced himself for what he was sure would cause him a truly legendary headache—and then, with a wave of his wand, all the water within ten meters of the little spark separated into Hydrogen and Oxygen.

Harry managed to see his spark become an inferno before the pain drove him to his knees, because as the conflagration blossomed in the depths of the sea, several things happened at once.

First of all, the sudden eruption of flames didn't just bolster his own spark, but every piece of Fiendfyre in the area. Ten cubic meters could fit a lot of things and while he'd done his best to limit to presence of the other flames, there was only so much he could do with all the 'fish' swimming through the depths. As such, the eruption of flames consisted of both his flames and the opposing ones, intermingled to the point that there was nothing to separate either of them. With the majority of the flames now existing within that volume, the controller of the fire depended completely on who managed to take control of the flames.

Second of all, always one to kill two birds with one stone if he could, Harry had placed his fish close to the giants before setting off the bomb and the resulting explosion had killed nearly all of them, which meant he had one less thing to worry about, thankfully.

Sadly, due to the third thing that had happened, he wasn't in much of a position to be satisfied with himself, because he was almost falling over in pain. Amassing its power, the Fiendfyre once more attempted to drive a wedge into his mind. As he was prepared for the attack this time, it wasn't anywhere near as bad as it had been last time—but there was only so pleasant having a malicious, sentient fire shoved into your head could get, prepared for it or not.

Worse, he had no choice but to multitask, splitting his concentration further. Whether or not he could have pushed the Fiendfyre back out of his mind if he focused on it—and he honestly wasn't sure he could have without severing his connection to it completely and risking it trying to eat him and the ship—it wouldn't have helped him in the slightest. It would have just taken over the sphere of flames outside and come back more powerful than ever to simply crush him again.

If he wanted to win, he had to win on both fronts. So he bolstered his own fire, inside and outside.

Inside his mind, he fed the flames false thoughts as quickly as he could produce them, along with scattered memories that he deemed unimportant, adding fuel to the fire that was the only defense his mind had. Outside, he tried to spread his control, taking advantage of the intermingling of the flames. He spread in a way differently from the Fiendfyre—less like an army and more like a disease. He infected a specific area, made it his completely, and then divided, rather than trying to crush his enemies with pure force. He continued to try and subtly turn the fire against itself and make its power his own, knowing he had no chance in a blatant battle of power against power.

Yet, anyway.

As he made progress on the Outside, the Fiendfyre tried to shift its concentration and stomp out his creations, but Harry didn't let it. When it took off the pressure, he expanded the fire within him outside the limits of his mind, attacking the Fiendfyre when it didn't expect it and doing the same thing on that end while merely trying to retain control of the areas he had taken in the sea.

Whenever the flames tried to focus somewhere specific, Harry attack them from the other side, never letting it regain its bearings. When it tried to spread out its will, Harry made powerful attacks from one end or another, giving ground when he thought it was unimportant for the simple goal of forcing the Fiendfyre to spread itself too thinly.

The Fiendfyre was strong, dangerous, and smarter than most people thought—but it wasn't good at accepting minor defeats and falling back for greater victories. It could wait for a chance, if it had too, but it preferred to crush others beneath its power. In the end, it just didn't have the patience.

Harry did. Auror work involved a lot of waiting. The final take down of a dark wizard could happen fast, but putting together evidence, questioning witnesses and suspects, and all the myriad of things one had to do to get to that point could take weeks or months—to say nothing of what was required as a father. He had experience when it came to waiting.

So he patiently took his opponent apart, covering his weaknesses and attacking it where it was weak and he was strong. Creating openings where there weren't any to exploit, putting it in a bad position, and taking it off guard. Pushing forward, falling back, but never letting the tide shift completely against him—that's how he won.

And just like that, he took control. As soon as he had dominance over the majority of the Fiendfyre, he wielded it against the rest, carefully but quickly turning the rest of it to his will, until his will was all that was left. To him, there were no minor threats or things that could be dismissed—he snuffed out every last spark of opposition or potential opposition.

The pain in his head was long gone when he straightened, brushing himself off needlessly.

"I'm okay," He said, knowing without looking that he was the target of worried glances. "I just had to—"

The wood of the boat creaked, as if some enormous hand had seized it and was attempting to crush it. It struggled for a moment, valiantly attempting to continue its ascent, but the force simply dragged it downwards. It didn't stop there, though, and the force increased until Harry suspected the boat was going to break long before it reached the bottom of the sea.

Of course, water would start flooding in long before that happened and once they were in the water, nothing would keep the giant's master from simply crushing the passengers to death. Harry could just Apparate away, but the people on the boat couldn't.

But then, that was probably the idea.

Harry took a slow, deep breath, and lowered his gaze, looking back down at the ocean floor.

"You've officially made an annoyance of yourself," He commented quietly, some of the Fiendfyre's heat leaking into his voice. "That was a _mistake_. You should have quit while you weren't dead."

He closed his eyes and commanded the Fiendfyre to move.

No, that was inaccurate. He didn't command it to move; _he moved_. The Fiendfyre was no longer anything but an extension of his mind, body, and will. He didn't tell it to rise—he lifted himself from the depths, put his thousand scattered pieces together and wrapped himself around the ship. The creaking stopped immediately as the flames kept the water at bay with their heat, vaporizing it on contact.

And yet, the same flames that did all of that merely glimmered across the hull of the ship, setting it aflame and yet not burning it—because he didn't want it to.

Within his smaller body, Harry apparated to stand atop his ship, quietly striding through the hellish flames without being burnt, his eyes piercing easily through the flames as he tried to find his enemy. He shifted his jaw slightly in displeasure as he had no more luck this time then he had before.

Fine, then. He'd just have to burn down everything until he found him.

With a sweep of his wand, the water separated into its composing elements, resulting in another explosion. Now having a bit more fire to play with, he gave his silent command, knowing without question that he would not be disobeyed.

The flames on and around the ship writhed and convulsed for a moment, quickly shaping themselves into forms. The Fiendfyre itself preferred the forms of great predators and beasts, whether magical or mundane, preferring them for some reason he'd never understood. But these flames were his now and when they assumed shapes, they did so according to his thoughts and beliefs.

Instead of animals, they grew into the shapes of men and women, twisting into shapes he didn't consciously decide but could easily recognize. Roman Legionaries and Greek Hoplites, mixed among random warriors he vaguely recalled seeing images of. Persian Immortals were scattered among Medieval Knights and Japanese Samurai, standing behind rows of the British Armed Forces. They shaped themselves into a small but varied army of warriors from a history that had not yet occurred, weaved from memory and flame. Their faces were all but featureless, but they still stood, as proud as any army that had ever existed.

Or perhaps that was just him. He tried his best not to allow this power to go to his head as he'd seen so many dark wizards do, but it was hard not to feel a little professional satisfaction after dragging an army out of the sands of time, if only in image. He was pretty sure even their armor was historically accurate, though that was probably just due to Hermione nitpicking over mistakes he had made in the past and his subconscious responding.

He took a moment to look at them then and nodded.

"Burn it all," He said, not to them but to the voice that he knew would surely be listening. "Until there's nothing but slag and ash."

The flame warriors jumped off the boat as one falling like stones in the water. And yet, as weightless as flames, they landed silently on the oceans floor and quickly began to spread throughout the city. With a Fiendfyre army, conventional tactics were largely unnecessary except in special occasions, so Harry just had them scatter immediately and spread throughout the giant's city, setting everything they touched ablaze.

Shouts erupted quickly as the wicked flames spread, making metals glow brightly even as they began to melt within the fires that had engulfed them. As the exteriors of the towers melted, they revealed the treasures held inside, serving as further fuel for his armies. The molten slag slid down the sides of towers, dripping to the ground and spreading out into puddles on the bottom of the sea, the heat of the liquefied buildings heating and setting ablaze anything they touched. And as they did, the shapeless flames quivered before rising in simulacra of men, forming ranks upon the melted remnants of the destroyed buildings.

Again and again, they destroyed—and from that destruction, created an even greater force. They burnt through the sea, taking nothing and leaving nothing behind.

But even so, his opponent did not show his face. Harry knew there was a limit to every man's restraint, but even with the giant's city being erased before him, there was no reaction.

And then, he noticed them.

Harry lifted his head, turning it once to the right and once to the left, spotting the figures at the edge of his vision. They were far away—too far for him to see properly—but they were definitely there. Leagues away, they were nothing but speckled dots in the distant, drawing attention only due to the havoc of their battle and the scattered, random lights intermixed within them.

For a moment of simple, blind reaction, he was prepared to set his flames upon them, but his rational mind made him hesitate as he realized the obvious.

The people in the distance were fighting each other. Presumably, at least some of them were giants, but there could easily be some other faction involved, whether it was an uprising, a civil war, or an invasion.

Harry pursed his lips for a moment before chuckling.

"I see. It seems you have other problems, too." He shook his head ruefully. "You're just having a bad day, aren't you? Hm…let's see if I can't make it worse."

Flying—if that term applied underwater—towards the battle to see what was going on, his flames adorning and following him, he arrived to witness a colorful scene. Varied giants fought creatures of all shapes and sizes. A Troll was fighting a giant that had no head while a small flock of what looked like mermaids were trying to claw the eyes out of a giant fish. A woman with blueish skin, fins, and gills was dueling with an aristocratic looking giant with swords, darting around him quickly to avoid the wide sweeps of his sword while a dwarfish man was wielding a sword three times his side was fending off a creature with the teeth and body of a shark but the arms and head of a man. Hippocampi fought with giant seahorses, fish-cats hunted among the deeps for swimming birds, and Krakens waged war with sea monsters.

The two strangest looking armies Harry had ever seen clashed and waged war as the giant's underwater city continued to burn. No one seemed to notice or, if they did, care, focused completely on destroying the enemies that had appeared before them.

Harry pondered it all, pausing for a moment to take it all in. The strangeness of the scene now before him was enough to warrant a raised eyebrow even from him.

But then he raised both of his hands high above his head and he filled the space above the battle with clouds of fire. Twisted lengths of wicked flames wound up and up from the depths of the sea, scattering groups and ending fights as combatants and allies alike broke apart in an attempt to dodge the flames as they rose and gathered above them.

For a moment, everything was silent in the depths of the sea. Harry scanned the stilled warriors as they shrank and sank away from the flames. From right to left, he judged them, before making a decision and focusing on one in particular.

He couldn't be sure who this other army was—though he was kind of guessing they were fairies or something here to rescue those other prisoners—but as the saying went, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Until that enemy was dead, of course, in which case his experience on the matter said that things tended to break down quickly.

But, at least for now, they wanted to get rid of these giants and he wanted to get rid of these giants. That was enough for him to decide whose side he was on. Still, with his 'allies' running around, he'd have to be a bit more precise with his attacks, he supposed.

Dropping his left hand quickly, he pointed two fingers at an important—as in, he had decorations on his armor—looking giant. From the burning clouds slide a bright streak of flame, hot to the point of being pure white, and struck him high in the chest. It had moved fast; not as fast as the lightning it resembled, perhaps, but as quick as any arrow. Skin, cloth, and hair caught fire instantly and the Giant began to scream, a high pitched noise to make up for the lack of thunder, breaking both the silence and stillness of the gathered armies.

The fairies gathered, sending up a battle cry, their moral and bloodlust doubled in the face of the unnatural aid, and threw themselves head first back into the fray. On the other hand, as the targets of the strange attack, the giants panicked. Some scattered in fear while others gathered into groups in the hopes of protecting themselves.

It was the later Harry focused on. Wiggling the fingers of his right hand like he was typing on a computer, drops of fire began to rain from the clouds, falling down on the largest group. They tried to move away from the flames, only to be pushed back by the fairies advance, trapping them with their backs to the wall of fire. Soon, the fire soldiers he'd left behind would finish destroying the city and come to his aid, and this battle would be all but over.

"Oh?" A smooth voice said from his side. "Perhaps I should thank you for the aid?"

Harry blinked and turned his head. Floating to his left was quite possibly the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. Her hair was white and her eyes a cold, cold blue and they stood out like sapphires against her white skin. He wasn't completely sure how her skin managed to look white against that hair, much less while she was wearing armor that looked like it had been carved from a glacier or something, but it did. Even with most of her body covered by its thick plates, her face alone made him think of muses and goddesses. If he was a poet or an artist, he'd have been inspired.

He wasn't though, so he just raised his eyebrow again, chalked it up as another strange occurrence, and snorted.

"Noticed that did you? How'd you notice me?" He asked, drawing back the hood of his cloak. "I'm usually pretty confident in my ability to go unnoticed when I want to, but you're the second one to pick up on me today. Could I be getting rusty in my old age, perhaps?"

The fairies began to successfully push back the group, driving them into the flames. Their screams rose up like a chorus as they began to die, but he paid them little mind.

"I wouldn't know, though I do not believe anyone else knows you're here yet. I assume the city burning down was your doing?" She asked, casual as if this was just another day for her.

"Yes, well," Harry adjusted his glasses. "A number of things happened and I got rather cross at them. There were few prisoners I stole away before I destroyed them all—I believe a few of them are yours."

"Hm?" She sounded it amused, but there was an undertone of…something. He wasn't sure what. "Then it seems I owe you a favor."

Harry shrugged and returned most his attention to the battle as she did the same.

But he couldn't keep from wondering, even after he'd done so.

"Who are you, exactly, my lady?" He asked politely, and felt without looking that she was smiling at the question.

"I am called the Morrigan, the Queen of Samhain's Seat. And who are you, sea-burner?"

Harry opened his mouth to reply when he felt the sea begin to churn.

"Hold that thought," He said, starting to smile. "I have to kill someone."

_Found you_, he thought, as a shape began to form.

The water churned before him, bending the light in odd ways as it twisted and moved. Currents and streams appeared, strong enough to be clear against the ocean around it as they flowed past, though, and around each other. Salt broke off from the sea water, gathering together subtly at first but growing more and more obvious by the second, forming grainy bones that stretched for what seemed like miles. The water that flowed around him darkened like the surface of a swamp, growing filthy and dark until his figure was obvious against the rest of the ocean, though as he moved his bones peaked through, as if the rest of his body was a bit slow to follow his motions. Twisted knots of some kind of luminous seaweed grew like moss over his head and his eye sockets filled with hundreds of dull, glassy orbs, as if he'd slain a thousand animals, plucked out their eyes, and taken them as his own. As he set his feet upon the seafloor and stood tall, the distant light of the surface that seemed to hover around his head like a crown of like made him seem like Atlas, carrying the sky on his shoulders.

"**Morrigan,"** The same voice as early murmured, now a thousand times louder. As his lips parted, Harry could see his teeth, formed of salt like the rest of his bones, but odd in their shapes. It was as if he hadn't been able to decide what creatures mouth to imitate; shark teeth here, human ones there, and a number of blunt formation that could have belonged to any of a thousand fish. **"You are a fool to come here, where my power is a law unto itself. You should have stayed hidden beyond the ninth wave as you have for so long."**

"You are as arrogant as ever, Conand," Morrigan murmured, amusement lacing every word. "And yet, here you are. Your city has been burnt away, your army has been broken, and for the first time in over two hundred years, you have been forced to retake your form. We both know you would not have made yourself so vulnerable if you did not think us a threat to your throne."

She cast him a sidelong glance at that, lips twitching briefly upwards as she spoke. Harry nodded minuscule at her words, understanding her. His throne, whatever it did, was important to him—enough so that he made himself vulnerable to external attack just to protect it.

Conand growled, a sound that seemed to shake the ocean around them and the dead orbs in his sockets almost seemed to come alive with hatred.

"**Such a pity for you then, that I am here now. Your powers have grown, Morrigan, and you have many allies now, but even still you have not the forces to stop me long enough to find what you seek—"**

"Interesting. I'll take that bet," Harry butted in, removing the hood of his cloak and smiling slightly with a confidence he was not sure he felt—there was just something about finding yourself in front of a man the size of a skyscraper that was off-putting. But he'd come too far to stop now, if victory was as close as he suspected. Tilting his head at his newfound ally, he mused aloud. "I'll wager my life that I can keep you preoccupied long enough for my dear friend here to find what she's after."

"**Firestarter…"** Conand snarled. **"Even now you interfere!? Leave now and I'll let you keep your entrails!"**

"Mmm, well, that's certainly a tempting offer but…I'm afraid I simply must decline. You see, Lord Conand, there are things that are simply beyond forgiveness. Whether you know why or not, after what you and your people have done I can no longer simply live and let live when I have a chance to stop you permanently." His eyes drifted to Morrigan. "Go along then. I'll handle things here."

She gave a somewhat wicked grin and bowed her head—and then she was gone, like she'd been a shadow and someone had turned on the lights. It wasn't apparition, maybe not even a form of teleportation, but something else…

This world…what a strange and interesting place it had turned out to be.

He shook his head of the thought as Conand spoke, angrier than ever and maybe just a little afraid. They had the advantage now and everyone knew it. The only way for Conand to salvage this situation was to kill them all.

Granted, that seemed to be his intention.

"**Handle me? You'll…**_**handle**_** me?"** He spat. **"You think you can? I tower over you like I tower over the rest of these pathetic little insects."**

"Oho?" Harry lifted an eyebrow. "Are we going to make this some sort of juvenile measuring contest, then? Because if we are, I have to say…"

The fires burning in the deep answered their Master's wordless call, forms falling away as they abandoned their fights, returning to shapeless flame as they gathered into serpentine rivers of fire, burning away any groups of Giants unlucky enough to be caught in their paths before merging upon Harry and engulfing him completely. The mass of fire shifted into an almost perfect sphere as the last of its pieces joined the whole, before extensions grew, formless at first, but quickly growing distinct, shaping fingers and hands to go with arms, boots at the end of legs, the outlines of eyes, a mouth, and a nose, which came together to form a rough, burning figure. The fire giant stood unhindered by the water, fearsome and mighty as its fell light cut through the darkness.

It also stood a full head taller than its opponent.

"…Mine's bigger," He finished, smiling amusedly.

The fight began without another word, their differences quickly becoming apparent. Beneath the murky water that made up most of his form, Conand had _some_ substance, if only in his salty bones. He also seemed to have an at least loosely defined shape around said bones. By contrast, the monster Harry had formed was completely composed of fire, thus lacking any actual solidity—it was just heat and light, in the end, after all. As a result of not having anything to define its form besides Harry's will, changing it was relatively simple.

On one hand, this meant Conand couldn't actually harm Harry's creation, as it lacked anything even remotely resembling vital organs—or anything else biological—and gave Harry a definite advantage in versatility. On the other hand, Harry's creation was largely incapable of blocking physical attacks, most of which slid cleanly through it, if somewhat superheated and on fire.

It would have been interesting to watch, mused Harry, hiding patiently in the flames, waiting. If there wasn't a real possibility of him dying. The simple truth of the matter was, for all his advantages, Conand had something he couldn't compete with—experience in this matter. Fiendfyre was not something he used to make enormous action figures to play with—or even fight with really. It was something that he would use and everyone would either run away or die, rather than facing it head on—his version of 'nuking it from orbit,' as it were. Having to use it to fight someone properly was…a first.

To make matters worse, the currents that made up most of his opponent's body acted as some type of wall, running too fast for his flames to penetrate down to his bones—which was probably the point. It was also probably the reason Conand had formed his bones from salt, which isn't normally flammable; though, of course, Harry was of the professional opinion that everything burned, given sufficient effort. That didn't change the fact that his currents were preventing him from reaching said salt in the first place, however.

Nonetheless, he reminded himself. Despite everything, this was a waiting game and Conand was the one fighting against the clock. All he had to do was keep his attention on him and avoid any surprises and there probably wouldn't be any trouble. Which seemed strange to him, in its own way. He was accustomed to trouble—familiar with it. It was weird to be without something that seemed to follow him everywhere. But even if he wasn't sure how to fight Conand like this, all he had to do was wait—there was no need to enter a fight he wasn't sure he could hold his own in.

He stroked his beard, pondering that for a moment, as a towering—as in, literally the size of a tower—broadsword emerged from the sand and stone beneath them and was quickly grasped by Conand's hand. The giant swung it through Harry's puppet, slicing neatly through the flames and Harry had too quickly lift himself from the stomach of his construct to near its heart to avoid the blow that would have…well, at that size, it wouldn't really have cut him. Liquefy might be a better term.

"Ah," Harry noted absently. "And that would be the trouble."

Yes, he supposed that Conand would win if he could hit him with such a weapon; his flames didn't have the tangibility to block such a thing and it'd take them a long, long time to burn away that much stone. Just like he'd win if the Morrigan found what she was looking for.

In that case, simply letting him continue to attack and waste time could itself be a dangerous idea.

So much for waiting. He'd just have to get creative.

The humanoid shape dropped away, 'melting' until it settled like a lake of fire on the sea floor, and Conand stumbled quickly back several steps to keep it from catching his feet before shifting his hold on his slowly burning sword and sweeping it quickly back and forth through the pool, like he was trying to clean the floor with a broom. Having none of it, the entire lake of fire tilted up and balanced entirely on its edge, like a coin made to stand on its side, before collapsing forward, trying to catch Conand with its fall.

With more agility then Harry would have expected from something his size, Conand leapt above the oncoming flames, a swish of his arms and a kick of his legs proving his skill in the water. From the ground, the flames pooled and shifted, rising up as a giant hand, long fingers reaching up towards the giant, who cut them off with a swipe of his enormous blade. The severed fingers twisted into the mouths of giant sharks even as the remains of the hand and forearm slide into the shape of a colossal squid. Long tentacles reached out with deft motions, trying to bind limbs tight, even as rows of jagged burning teeth raced towards Conand's eyes—but the 'skin' of his right arm bulged grotesquely, widening the tentacle's hold, before he literally pulled his bones and sword out of it. Even without anything coating it, the salty bones twirled the blade expertly as Conand gave a disdainful snort, severing each tentacle in a single motion. As new water came rushing in to remake the flesh of his arm, the giant swung the flat of his blade in an arc that blew away the shapes of the fangs before bringing it down on the squid with enough force to send it flying away in pieces in every direction.

Finding himself careening through the water end over end, it took Harry a moment to gather the focus needed to cast a Cushioning Charm on the quickly approaching wall and keep the impact from shattering his bones, though the sudden stop still hurt. Bouncing off it, he caught himself in the water and had just enough time to realize he'd been blown clean out of his flames before then the water caught _him_. Coming around him like a vice, spots exploded across his vision as it tightened around his neck with enough force that Harry was pretty sure it would crush his neck out of shape if he didn't do something. He apparated quickly, not having time to locate the safety of his flames. As he reappeared he had just enough time to take a quick breath and catch sight of Conand before the water took a hold of him again.

It was enough.

All around Conand, the flames he'd reduced to embers and sparks with relentless, sweeping blows gathered together quickly, their target decided, shaping themselves into ten thousand little knives and cutting through the water, stabbing into the currents of his body and trying to penetrate deeper despite the implacable resistance. They twisted and tugged, trying to grow barbs and claws to take ahold and give them leverage to sink deeper into the giant, to no avail.

It did, however, make a pretty amazing distraction and the moment the pressure eased off of him, Harry apparated back to the safety of his fires, taking complete control of them yet again. Splayed across the giant's hide, he made them spread, trying to cover his opponent from head to toe. If he could boil away all that water and keep him from drawing in anymore—

He had only a second to realize something was wrong and it wasn't nearly enough. Conand drew away, skeleton stepping cleanly out of liquid flesh, and the black water that had made up his form folded outwards, bending so that the flames that had covered them were now contained neatly inside it, and the skeleton of salt curled the bones of its fingers at the sphere was the last thing Harry saw before blackened waters hid the world from his sight. More and more water piled atop them, drawing around the flames and trying to drown them. In the end, all the managed was to compress them, but it accomplished the same.

If he apparated out, he'd be in the water, and with the amount of force Conand had caught him with last time, he wasn't sure he'd have the presence of mind needed to apparate again. If he stayed in here, though, Conand would just compress the fire until he was sure he couldn't miss his target and that giant blade would splatter him—and then a thought occurred to him and he could have smacked himself for his own foolishness.

"Anything to say, Firestarter?" Conand murmured over the black sphere.

For a moment, everything was silent in the dark.

And then there was light.

It started as a pinprick—a candle flame against the shadows of the deep sea. But it grew, as if the darkness that tried to smother it had caught flame, burning the blackened waters as if they were but paper held above a flame. Its light spelt through the murky veil, dim at first, like a light covered in cloth, but growing steadily brighter.

The water Conand sought to compress shrank so suddenly that for a hesitating moment, he thought that it might have been getting consumed outright, but it only took a moment to realize the true reason—the resistance it had been facing had completely disappeared.

And yet, the light being emitted from within remained and he hadn't felt that sudden displacement of water that had characterized his opponent's sudden reappearances. Then…

The light within the sphere moved suddenly, sliding through—and out—of the pressurized water as if it were no different than moving through simple air, and Conand saw the reason behind what had happened. The old man that he had been fighting had changed, the layers and layers of fire around him having folded in upon themselves, over and over and over again, until they must have been all but flat against him—a second skin of light that made it seem as if he were a man carved out of a star. It burnt bright enough that it hurt to look at him and making out any specific features was all but impossible.

The water around him shifted and turned oddly, the heat constantly evaporating all that it touched and then superheating it even beyond that —just as it had the water under Conand's control. The man within the flames did not even seem to notice, anything that resisted his movements burning cleanly away.

Instead, he simply looked at the giant before him, expression impossible to see through the Fiendfyre mask.

It seems that one never becomes too old to make mistakes, Harry mused. And this entire battle had been nothing but one, prolonged mistake. He hadn't used his tools properly, perhaps having been put off by having to face such a massive opponent. When faced with a giant problem, he had attempted to answer with a giant solution—enormous constructs of Fiendfyre, animated by his will—despite how ill equipped he knew he was for such a tactic. Prior to this, Fiendfyre had been a last resort; this was his first time he had ever used it in such a manner.

And that was where he'd made his error—why would he willingly fight this way? Especially after it repeatedly proved not to work? Wasn't it his policy to not be inefficient? To stick with small and simple approaches for greater results? Had he really been intimidated by an opponent just because he had been a few thousand times bigger than him?

No, that wasn't the reason. His opponent had been big, but the real cause had been him—he had been arrogant. It had been nearly _seventy_ years now since the last time he'd entered a battle that he wasn't completely sure he could win and after Justin, he'd thought this would be no different. Justin had reminded him that he couldn't just ignore matters and take things for granted, but when they'd fought, he hadn't doubted for even a second who would be the winner. Just as he hadn't in this fight, certain that his skill and power would see him through anything his opponent could bring at him—and even when someone had appeared before him, towering over the battlefield like a giant and taken away his ability to apparate freely, he hadn't taken it seriously, not really. Not one to make the same mistake twice, he'd ensured the people he sought to protect were safe and couldn't be harmed, but he hadn't approached the problem as seriously as he should have.

Instead of sticking with what he was best at, he allowed himself to be dragged into his opponents preferred form of combat, certain he could win a fight like this, even lacking any experience in the matter. If the him from a seventy years ago could see him now…After all those times he'd preached these lessons to the younger Aurors, you'd think they'd be carved into him by now.

Did you ever make a mistake like this, Dumbledore? He wondered, before sighing to himself. Probably; age seemed to make fools of us all.

But if he could still make mistakes, he could still learn from them as well, and he would. No giant movie monsters, this time, and no unfamiliar battles or fair fights. This may have been a trick he'd never used before, but it was _his_ trick, the type he'd use, not something he'd allowed himself to be tricked, knowingly or not, into doing. Rather than spreading the Fiendfyre into larger and larger constructs—as if such things would mean anything with something that wasn't even solid—spreading out the heat and the flames, he gathered them to himself; all that heat, all that power, contained an inch from his skin and tightly under his control.

This trick…Conand had shown it to him, in a way, when he'd tried to compress his flames. He'd shown him the way to victory and showed him his mistakes.

So Harry told him the last words he'd ever hear.

"Burn," He said, lifting a finger.


End file.
